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April 16, 2010 | Steve Chitwood

Finally, a chirp worth tweeting about.

Though Twitter, the popular microblogging service is ubiquitous in the online world, headlines for the company have been fleeting for much of the last year. Moreover, in the discussions I’ve been privy to at various industry events, the consensus seemed to be building that Twitter had reached its zenith and had begun its slow glide to obscurity. Facebook and LinkedIn status updates and location-aware social applications like Gowalla and Foursquare have been growing and seem to better answer users’ desires to stay instantly connected to the social grid. The lack of a strategy to monetize the service has kept advertisers and major brand marketers at bay along with their budgets and ability to facilitate innovation and consumer adoption.

Alas, an early spring chirp was finally heard this week signaling a possible resurgence. At the Chirp Conference Twitter execs announced a series of significant changes that address much of what the industry has been crowing about:

• The really big news is promoted tweets, a new advertising platform where advertisers can buy access into a topical Twitter stream. With some similarities to Google’s AdWords platform, this might just start building a justification for the billion-dollar valuation the revenue-neutral service has earned thus far.

• User Streams, a new data service provided by Twitter to desktop applications. This allows developers access to real-time data directly from Twitter. Look for a flock of new Twitter-enabled applications in the near future.

• A developer roadmap to calm the fears of developers and marketers about the service and where it is going. Look for increased functionality around location awareness, annotations, and other features.

• A new home page to address the high abandonment rate of new subscribers. Early tests show a 20% increase in retention.

Along with the technical discussions, Twitter management also shared data about the service that has long been speculated and rarely confirmed. It turns out that Twitter is bigger than we all expected. According to cofounder Biz Stone, Twitter has nearly 106 million registered users and 180 million unique visitors a month—far above many previous industry expectations. To date, the service has been tight-lipped about this type of information. Even more impressive, Twitter is growing at a rate of 300,000 new users a day, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Twitter still has a rough flight ahead. Archenemy Facebook is gearing up for the annual F8 Conference, which promises the unveiling of new features and direction for the 400 million user–strong social network. But for now, Twitter can enjoy the warm glow of springtime optimism.

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March 26, 2010 | Karen Johnson

My Theory on Social Media Sentimentality

Before I launch into my theory on how the success of Facebook is heavily linked to its stronghold on sentimentality and nostalgia, let me first establish my credentials on matters relating to sentimentality.

My paternal great-grandfather presented a unique engagement ring to my great-grandmother. Small by today’s standards, the ring featured a half-carat, semi-rare yellow diamond set in gold with etchings consistent with the period. Stunning. This ring was passed down to my grandmother, then to my mother, and now sits comfortably in my jewelry drawer. Or at least it rested there until two weeks ago. At 3:38 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon, my phone rang. On the other end? The mom of the second-grader for whom my son Luke has a deep crush. Seems Quinn came home from school and sheepishly revealed to her mom that Luke had asked her to be his girlfriend and, upon seeing her nod, presented her with a small gift. Yes, you guessed it … my precious, sentimentally charged ring.

Think about it. Within a 24-hour period, that ring went from its warm nest in my drawer, to my 7-year-old’s grubby fingers, into the goldfish-cracker-lined zipper compartment of his backpack, all the way to school, then into his tiny pocket, out to recess, through a few rounds on the jungle gym and, when the time was right … onto Quinn’s tiny finger, which, as you can imagine, was way too small to adequately keep the ring securely in place. I can only surmise that Quinn, upon returning from recess, tucked the ring “safely” into her pink backpack’s goldfish-cracker-lined zipper compartment, before boarding her bus to go home.

Phew! Thank goodness Luke is drawn to smart women. Instead of secretly placing the ring in a random special box, Quinn decided to divulge this news to her mom. Obviously, this story has a happy ending. No need to rehash the events that followed, only to say Quinn now has a different token, and my great-grandmom’s ring is back where it belongs, nestled comfortably between an heirloom gold bracelet and my favorite Tiffany tear-drop earrings. Life is good.

But I digress. The subject at hand (or, should I say, ring finger?) is sentimentality as it relates to Facebook. If your high school years are a distant memory and you’re juggling home/job demands while raising a family, there’s a strong likelihood that you are a fan of Facebook for reasons that have more to do with the past than with the future.

Call it sentimentality, nostalgia or basic curiosity, but there’s just something intriguing about reconnecting with peripheral friends and hearing the nuances of their lives. Granted, some details we can do without (“Just took the dog out for a walk,” or “Heading to John’s soccer game.”) But more often than not, we get a fascinating glimpse into the lives of people we’ve always cared about but simply don’t have the time to catch up with this easily via any other form of technology.

Case in point. Jennifer, whom I haven’t seen in 20 years but spent my K-12 school years with, is now a Facebook friend. She recently posted about a dilemma she was facing involving her young son, birthday-party invitations and a bully. She needed help and turned to “us.” What ensued was a delightfully entertaining stream of motherly advice, pearls of wisdom and a ton of “been there, done that.” The exchange was both humorous and educational. Jennifer, who once trusted us with silly teenage secrets and turned to us for fashion advice when she bought her first pair of Jordache jeans, was turning to us once again — only the subject matter has changed. It seems we’re all wading through the same life-stage stream, and Facebook provides the comfort factor of having a familiar face to the name when we seek advice online.

When polled, most of my Facebook friends site: “reconnecting with old friends” as the primary reason they enjoy Facebook and stay active on it. One of my more feisty friends commented, “I love that Facebook offers me the opportunity to peruse through the photos of people I haven’t seen in 20 years and occasionally marvel about how they’ve let themselves go. … I know I’m going to h*ll for that one.”

Few would dispute that Facebook has the capacity to evoke sentimental feelings, by the sheer nature of its design and functionality. And sentimentality can be a strong marketing tool.

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March 14, 2010 | Staci Amend

HONEY TRUMPS VINEGAR: Social Media is Changing Customer Service

I’m here at the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin, and I have to admit: It’s fun to have front-row seats for the paradigm shift.

Yes, it’s still about design and development, but more than ever before, it’s about how you deliver the message—and today, that method is social media. In his session ENGAGE (after his popular book by the same name), Brian Solis spoke about the ways in which social media are transforming the ways in which we live and do business. “Consumers,” he said, “speak much louder than marketing or PR about your product and your brand. You cannot have enough community managers—everything is triage, all the time.”

Which gave me a great idea. Remember the old adage about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar? Last year, I bought a “Flora Major” yoga bag from Sherpani—a Boulder brand that prides itself on designing great totes for active women. The bags are cute enough, but I bought mine because (a) it had a specific feature that I was looking for (straps that purportedly attached one’s mat to one’s bag) and (b) because I know lots of women who have Sherpani bags and love them. The company is wisely capitalizing on the latter, recently relaunching its website with a new tagline: “Women don’t just buy Sherpani, they join Sherpani.” They have just over 1,800 Facebook fans and 460 followers on Twitter.

Good for them, right? Except I didn’t love my bag—I didn’t even really like it—so I wasn’t feeling much like a joiner. Since my dissatisfaction was functional in nature, I decided to try my case in the court of customer service. Knowing what I knew about the brand (and expecting that as the customer, I would be “always right”), I was surprised to get an unfriendly voice on the phone. That’s FAIL #1. When I told her that the mat straps don’t work properly—they don’t tighten, and they catch on the sticky material of the yoga mat—she not-so-politely suggested that the issue might be related to user error. Um…that would be FAIL #2.

I was the only person who’d complained about it, she said, so it couldn’t possibly be a design flaw—it’s one of their most popular products! So, rather than simply help me with the return process, she suggested that I take the bag to REI to have a third party install quick-release buckles, which “might be easier” for me to use. Hello! This is a bag I’d had for eight days. FAIL #3. By that point in the conversation, I was frustrated enough that I simply thanked her (tersely) and rang off before the real vinegar started flowing.

And I lived with it. It was, after all, my only in-hand option for carrying all my stuff to yoga. Then, about a year after I purchased my bag, I had a great customer service experience at a different yoga store—and I was reminded of my bad experience at Sherpani. So I decided to try again. I made my case (a rather compelling one, IMHO) in an email rather than on the phone, hoping that I’d have a better chance to be branded as a “live one” and get bumped up to a person with the actual authority to give me what I wanted.

Which brings me to FAIL #4. A whole week went by…crickets. I actually went back to my sent mail to make sure I had sent it to the right address. So I decided instead to try my case in a place where it really belonged—in the increasingly accessible court of public opinion. It took about five minutes to become a Facebook fan of Sherpani and post an abbreviated, friendlier, more “social” version of my complaint. And it took less than an hour for me to get a response.

Now, what happened next was even MORE interesting, because the point here is actually an even more important lesson for Sherpani than simply practicing the basics of customer service. First I got a fairly generic response via Facebook: apologies for your bad experience, of course we’ll take your bag back, here’s the link to our return authorization. Which was a definite improvement, no? In the days before social media, that would probably have been enough.

But today’s consumer is being flash-trained to expect more. So next, I finally got my reply from customer service. Again, they apologized for the delay and said they would be happy to refund my money. Since it had gone beyond their 30-day refund time frame (like, 11 months beyond), the CS rep took the time to (a) dig up my order number, (b) fill out the return authorization form and (c) send me a pre-paid shipping label. Now that is customer service. And that’s the kind of brand that inspires people to not just buy, but to join.

Was this a case of honey vs. vinegar? I don’t think so. The Socialsphere has made everything so immediately, terrifyingly public that our opinions actually DO matter—to the manufacturers of the products we buy, the makers of products people want us to buy and the people thinking up products we’ll buy next year. Invaluable market research is being conducted every minute of every day, and just about everyone has access to it.

So, even though I had chosen to use honey to catch this particular fly, it was actually the threat of vinegar—just a dash of it on their Facebook fan page, where their most loyal customers live—that got the job done. And if Sherpani is smart, they’re discussing HOW it got done, and how to empower their community managers as well as their customer service reps to deliver the level of care that today’s customer demands…and deserves.

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February 22, 2010 | Melissa Eggert

Is Twitter right for everyone?

I read Brandweek this past week and have been thinking over the feature article titled “The Tweet Hereafter – Just how effective is Twitter as a marketing tool?” The argument in the article is rooted in the lack of participation on Twitter, the decline of new users per month, and the disconnect between large brands and their audiences on Twitter.

I bring up this article because I see validity behind the points. I think it’s something to consider when suggesting Twitter to clients or for your own company. One director of social media strategy stated that Twitter was effective for only a few areas of marketing:

customer relations management

deals and promotions

conversations for smaller, lesser-known brands.

The statistics also prove a point. Large brands, such as Verizon and Target, have 5,000 to to 10,000 followers. Smaller “organic” brands like Woot and Someecards have almost 2 million followers. And some celebrities? 3-4 million. Why? Because the smaller brands and the celebrities have distinct personalities that larger brands simply cannot have on Twitter (unless it’s the CEO or a customer service help-line like Best Buy’s Twelpforce). Think about how many checkpoints corporations have to go through if they want to get their tweets approved, etc. It takes a long time, and the personality gets lost in the process.

The CEO of Someecards, which has 1.7 million followers in a little over a year, credits his success to his ability to express his creative personality within his brand on Twitter (snippets of wisdom, random links, etc). Twitter matches with the company mission – their cards are all short-form communication. They are known for great one-liners. Twitter works.

Bottom line: No one is really certain how long Twitter will be around. But what I am learning is that before we jump into these social network tools, we need to be thinking about what purpose they serve us. Does Twitter really work for your company? It’s easy to set up an account, it’s easy to acknowledge that everyone in involved in it currently – but are you asking: Why is it good for me?

Being on the cutting edge is crucial in this industry. Equally so is our ability to evaluate these cutting-edge trends and decipher whether or not they align with our brands’ goals. I would love your feedback.

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