Twitter as Marketing 101. I'm your hero.

So a couple of days ago I posted a hateful, spiteful Blog about Twitter. And though I'm not really apologizing, I have to admit that there is a bit more to the story. Factually, if you're a marketer, experienced or aspiring (or a little bit of both) you can get an MBA's worth of education every day if you follow the right people.

I don't know if you noticed, but a LOT of people use Twitter, so finding the right people to follow can be a bit tricky. Have no fear, however. I will be your superhero. Having just read "The Archimedes Effect" chapter in Trust Agents, I feel inspired to share some of what I have learned in my Twitter experience. To wit, here are some people that I follow right now that I feel are helping me a great deal (whether they realize it or not). I think they might help you out too.

Marketing in General

There are quite a few people I follow who can offer wisdom on pretty much any facet of marketing. Some of these folks are:

Ann Handley: @marketingprofs. She keeps you up-to-date on what's going on at, well, marketingprofs.com. Includes reminders about webinars that you will kick yourself for missing!

@BethHarte: Beth is another mastermind behind marketingprofs. She tends to moderate Tweet chats that are full of excellent information.

Fast Company Magazine @fastcompany Sometimes they post things that are just plain funny, but I find the majority of their tweets extremely informative. You almost forget that they're trying to sell a magazine.

Julien Smith @julien Co-author of Trust Agents, Julien tends to delve deep into the philosophy of and behind marketing.

@chrisbrogan: The other co-author of Trust Agents, Chris follows his own advice. There's a hint of self-promotion but also more than a dash of accessibility.

John Jantsch @ducttape I've seen Jantsch's name around for quite some time. He is a veritable fount of knowledge on all things marketing. It's great to be able to get his take on things every day!

@allenmireles Another woman who is unassuming yet brilliant. Don't ya just hate people like that?!? :)

Blogging

If you are here, you likely have some interest in Blogging. Blogging is a topic that just seems to rev up more and more, so it's great to be able to get tons of expert advice for FREE! Here's who I follow for that.

@DeniseWakeman: Queen of the Blog Squad, you'll get 3-5 excellent tidbits of advice every day.

@kikolani: Another great resource. Lots of expert advice if you follow this account!

@mackcollier: If you need just 1 reason to follow someone, may I submit for your approval BlogChat (with a hash tag). I just "attended" my first one last night. This gentleman is responsible for this genius. 


Search Engines/Search/Analytics

If the more techy side of things is where you like to chill, you can totally geek out by following these folks:

@johnbattelle: Yep, the author of Search is on Twitter. Lots of insight plus blogging from all of the conferences you wish you could go to!

Rick Klau @rklau: I discovered Rick's expertise a couple of years ago kind of by accident. I happened upon a presentation he did for Google at a not-for-profit. He's a good guy to follow for all things Google related. I learned from following him about draft.blogger.com.

@stephanspencer: SEO expert!

@avinsahskaushik: If you've ever had the experience of watching a webinar by this guy, you can imagine how fun it is to follow him. Lots of useful information plus non-marketing posts that are just as interesting.


PR/Social Media

Jason Baer @jaybaer Jay is a great person to follow on Twitter. Another person who demonstrates knowledge without being snobby. Good stuff!

@MariSmith: Queen of Facebook. Mari has her finger on all of the latest happenings on that crazy site. Plus she has the coolest accent out of any of the other marketing peeps I follow :)

David Meerman Scott @dmscott: Scott's book (what is that?) really changed a lot of my thinking about marketing. Now you can follow him!

Webinars

If you're looking to add webinars to your mix, make sure you follow @shelleyryan. Formerly of marketingprofs, Shelley is working on a new webinar related project. She teaches and learns at the same time. Plus she's a foodie, so she'll make ya hungry!

These are (I hope) all of the people whose posts I really look for every day. They get me to think, they teach me stuff, and it just seems fair that I let you know that they are out there. All you have to do to drink from the fountain is step up :)

ETA: Fixed Rick Klau's Twitter Handle. D'oh.

Image by Julien Tromeur. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/julosstock

Yoga for Marketers

Do you like to do Yoga? Have you ever done Yoga? I'm in quite a Yoga phase right now. All different kinds. Some Rodney Yee, some Suzanne Deason, even some Biggest Loser Yoga (ouch). One of the great things about Yoga is that the advice and steps you take during a work-out can carry through to the rest of your day. It is not so surprising, then, that I realized that marketers could also benefit from some Yoga wisdom. Don't worry -- you won't be doing any physical stretches here. It's all in your head :)

Find Your Center

At the beginning of a lot of Yoga work-outs, you are advised to find your center while standing evenly on your two feet. For a marketer, finding your center means squarely standing on your two feet, which are knowledge and experience. Do not be swayed too much by what others are saying or doing. Listen, but remain conscious of what you want to achieve and what you want to accomplish. Keep your eyes on your goals, and if your knowledge and experience plant you in a way that is unique, all the better.

Breathe

No matter what kind of Yoga you are doing, you will hear an emphasis on breathing. Breathe in deeply, exhale out tension and toxins. Even while you are asking your body to stretch its limits, your mind works on concentrating on how your breath goes in and out. For a marketer, breathing is actually important physically. The world is a stressful place, and at least for me, I only realize how shallow my breaths get when I sit down and actually try to take deep breaths. But a marketer can also concentrate on internal rhythms, goals, objectives, and desires while working on everyday tasks, while building a foundation, while going to meetings and/or conferences. This kind of approach -- concentrating on one thing in the foreground while in the background you are working on something else -- is behind many ideas that are floating out there today.

Stay balanced

There isn't a lot you can do in Yoga that doesn't require some amount of balance. Similarly, there isn't a lot a marketer can do that doesn't require some balance, and I don't mean just the bottom line. Are you balancing your online, offline, and Social Media campaigns appropriately? Are you balancing your time in promoting yourself versus promoting others? Are you balancing your time in completing tasks the regular way while learning all the time how to do things in new ways?

Turn things upside down

One of the more common poses in Yoga is called Downward Facing Dog. Your head is down, your legs are stretched back. The idea is that turning upside down will release toxins and stress. For a marketer, turning things upside down can shine the light on a new way to approach things. But upside down is also a good way to think about how a marketer can construct a campaign. We all know the ultimate goal: sell something. What is the last step before the sale? How do you get to that step? And the one before that?

Honor your body

Finally, a lot of Yoga instructors remind you to honor your body. Sometimes it makes you feel kind of bad. The instructor may be leaning backwards to reach his or her ankles and you are lucky to reach back even a little. But you are told to honor your body and its restrictions. The same holds true for marketers. Not everyone can do what the great gurus of marketing do, especially not at first. If you can't do the full pose in Yoga, you find an adaptation. The same holds true for marketers. If you don't think you have enough content for a weekly Blog, start with a monthly or quarterly e-newsletter, or start with comments. If you just can't seem to master a certain skill, accept that limitation. Not everyone can turn themselves into a human pretzel. Trying can result in serious pain. The same holds true for marketing. Do not extend beyond what you are comfortable doing. The result will not be favorable.

Do you have a hobby that feeds your soul and also carries you through your profession? I'd love to hear about it!


Image by Aaron Neifer. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/knife18

Being human and the French Revolution

Just finished chapter 3 of Trust Agents. I liked this chapter a lot better than chapter 2, actually. The chapter is called One Of Us, and it's about how a trust agent must learn how to be one with the crowd and how that is a different game from brand evangelism.

A lot of people are talking about "talking human" these days. I already mentioned Harry Gottlieb's webinar about talking human. Avinash Kaushik talked about being human in his recent webinar. And Brogan and Smith also note that the authentic human is the one who will meet a lot of success on the web.

All great revolutions must face a counter-revolution

Turning marketing into a game of human relationships is a revolution of magnificent proportions. Selling by not selling may not be what Ogilvy ever could have envisioned. My love of History tells me one thing though. Any time there is a revolution, a counter-revolution follows. The French Revolution is a great example of this. While people were cutting each others' heads off for fun (and while women were knitting in the front row before the gallows to catch some blood), other counter-revolutionaries were already thinking that maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Out of all of that chaos came Napoleon, who not only wanted to rule France, but he kind of wanted to be Emperor of the whole world. Mexico's history is a patchwork quilt of revolutions and then counter-revolutions. Here in the US, the rebellious sixties were forced to reconcile with the super conservative 80s.

If everyone talks human, is anyone talking human?

A dear friend of mine always says that the words "trust me" are an automatic turn-off for her. For Star Wars fans, "trust me" may call up Han Solo's sort of false confidence too. So here is my question. Let's say that more and more people start following the advice of Brogan and Smith and Kaushik and Gottlieb. Everyone is authentic, everyone is doing you favors, lifting up the noobs, and life on the internet has become a kind of 21st century Pollyanna.

Is anyone really being authentic at that point?

If every person who comments on your blog or starts following you on Twitter ultimately mentions a product or a consultation service, are you going to start to wonder if anyone REALLY is interested in you as a human? Moreover, are YOU doing anything because you are really interested in other peoples' humanity?

I think that the idea of marketing via personal relationships is a wonderful idea, and the way that it's explained in Trust Agents gets no complaint from me. But statistically speaking, this approach is bound to run into a counter-revolution at some point. Maybe people will WANT to know on the front end if you're trying to sell something. Then you can talk about the baseball game.

What do you think? Will the online environment eventually tighten up in reaction to too much touchy-feely? How will that happen? Maybe "that guy" that Brogan and Smith talk about, the one who hands out business cards at every possible moment, maybe "that guy" will become the new Napoleon. You just never know.

Image by Michal Zacharzewski. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/mzacha

15 things to hate about Twitter

I saw a post the other day by Julien Smith (I know, it's like I'm a one-track mind lately) about how hard it is to build a following on Twitter. For relative noobs like me this was great news. However, it released a Hulk-like amount of frustration that I've just been waiting to vent about Twitter. So here we go. My top 15 Twitter pet peeves.

1. Balance is not a rule on Twitter. If you look around, most of the people who have 500,000 followers are only following 1-2 people. Conan O'Brien is a great example of this - when the Twitter "follower" feed was hacked, it became noticeable when Conan seemed to actually be following people. So what is this about, Tweet prophets? I get why you can't follow everyone who follows you, but really? 1-2% of the people following you, if that, are worth you following?

2. I was under the impression that Twitter is a social network. I think this is slightly misleading. I have encountered people on Twitter that you could retweet, tweet, mention, or whatever else all day long and they still would not give a reply back. It is called SOCIAL media, right? Deodorant and teeth brushing aren't problems, so what gives?

3. People who #talk in #hashtags for no #good reason annoy the heck out of me. Talk English. I don't speak in pound symbols. And if your sentence doesn't really have to do with any of the 20 topics you just tagged, it's not going to help you either, right?

4. I find it both creepy and irritating when someone retweets your post because of a word you used rather than because of what you actually said. I retweeted an article about how Nancy Pelosi said that her policy is based on The Word. I got "mentioned" by JesusNews. Eh?

5. A person you are following can direct message you. When you go to reply, it won't work if they aren't following you. Do you know how frustrating it can be to try to send a direct message back only to find that you, well, can't, because you're not being followed? If you're going to send me a direct message, can't you follow me?

6. The self-promotion on Twitter is terrible. I'm guilty of this one to a degree because I drive traffic to this blog using my tweets. However, I never once have said, "Come see my brilliant post." I try to lure people in to this here sticky goo based on subject matter. I find it misleading when someone tweets, "Oh, a really interesting concept" and then it's their blog. I feel cheated!

7. 9 times out of 10, logging into Twitter does not work. 'Nuff said.

8. Twitter perpetually seems like a personal cocktail party that you are eavesdropping on. I do not want to be privy to what you and your friends are planning to do, or what you and your friends did, or what you and your friends thought about what you did. Even if you're famous. Well, maybe not that last part, but still...

9. Foursqure. Oh foursquare. You are the thorn in my side, the weight on my shoulders, the...well, you get the idea. People thought tweets were banal before. Now you can find out when your contacts are working out, when they're following that up by a trip to the bar, and when they have become mayor of a furniture store. Ay caramba.

10. Trending Topics. I read an article the other day about whether Twitter had the right to remove Justin Bieber from trending topics and whether trending topics are worthwhile anyway. Short answer: no, no they're not. Right now, at this minute, four of the trending topics have hearts in them. One of those also has the word Bieber. Another trending topic right now: Ghetto Spelling Bee. Really? I mean...really?

11. The quoters are just awful on Twitter. Now some people have done a good job with it. I know a lot of people who follow "Tiny Buddha," which is a good use of Twitter. But I followed a guy for awhile and ALL he did was alternate quotes by other people with links about ex-girlfriends. Creepy. And yet his handle indicated that he would be talking about useful info. I kept waiting...

12. If you are a grammarian, you should probably avoid Twitter. I can't tell you how many tweets I see that say, "Retweet if your single" or "Their the bad guys." Move away from the computer, drop the chalupa, and learn the difference between your and you're, their, they're, and their, and many other troublesome word sets. Duhrive. Me. Crazeh.

13. How does a person with 1 tweet get 100,000 followers? This would seem to argue against Smith's case that it's hard to get followers. I remain perplexed.

14. People pretending to be celebrities. This was a major problem with Myspace. For fun, once, I followed five accounts pretending to be one of my favorite actresses. I don't think any of them noticed. It was funny. But kind of creepy. People need to get lives.

15. People who post the same thought over and over again in different ways also annoy me. Yes, I notice. I'm not living in the movie Memento. Yet. Move on to your next winning thought, please.

So there you have it. My 15 least favorite things about Twitter. What are yours?

The downside of making your own game

So I finished chapter two of Trust Agents. The chapter is about "making your own game." Brogan and Smith give a lot of examples how to do this, and they expertly use the analogy of "hacking" a game to improve your experience. They also reference, often, Gary Vaynerchuk, who created The Wine Library. I really liked this chapter for about 80% of the time I was reading it. I am all about trying to put a new spin on things. If I were an architect, I'd probably always want to put additions on to a perfectly fine house. Motivational stuff. I dig it.

But then...I got to the last few pages, which talk about "hacking" at work. And I have to raise my hand (because I can't raise my eyebrow) and say, to quote a cowboy, "Woah."


Is this realistic?

A few times at this point in the book, there have been references to the fact that both Smith and Brogan have been able to be game-changers within their various jobs. Brogan convinced his bosses that he could work outside the office and be more productive. Neither man has submitted a CV to get a job for a few years. I'm sure that all of this is true, but in the world that I live in, being a game changer is not so easy. And I think that it's important to emphasize, though it is touched upon in the book, that trying to create your own way of doing things can actually make other peoples' jobs really hard or can cause mistakes that companies previously did not have to deal with.

In my experience...

I have been on both sides of the game changing...game. Sometimes the endings are happy, but a lot of the time, a lot of bad feelings surface in the wake of the wild and crazy ship. Here are some examples.

I was training a person at a job once and going through a step-by-step process of how to accomplish a specific task. This methodology was something I had put together, which had been a bit of a game change in and of itself, but every step had a reason. The game-changer I was training kept asking if they could skip this step, or couldn't they do this and then this. I didn't want to squash the person's desire to improve a process, nor did I want to squash the person's desire to try to increase productivity, efficiency, or anything else. However, it was kind of like a toddler telling me that there was a much better way to walk now. It might be true, but till you're walking upright, I'm going to be cynical.

So it is for many scenarios within a company structure, no matter how big or small the company may be, no matter what kind of company it may be. Accounting is complicated. Production work is complicated. Media buying is complicated. Manufacturing is complicated. And it all needs to be perfect. All the time. Until you can prove that you understand all of the possible ramifications of your game-changing move, I think it's dangerous to think that rushing off to your own groundbreaking ceremony is a good idea.

I have been in the game-changer's increasingly restrictive shoes on numerous occasions as well. I have been involved in groups where I brought up ideas and was told that I was trying to fix things that weren't broken (a common retort to the game-changing attitude that Brogan & Smith don't mention). I have seen game-changers succeed but instead of earning respect, they receive snubs and stabs in the back. I have seen game-changers succeed, then leave, creating a situation where no one else can pick up where they left off. These are all risks that should be considered carefully before engaging in "job hacking."

To be fair...

Brogan and Smith do reiterate that you need to learn the rules first and that you need to be real with people. They do emphasize that anarchy, though the subject of many great songs, may not always be the best approach.

Given that, the ending of this chapter lost me a bit. As is the case with any reading experience, different things are going to resonate with different people for different reasons. However, with a fair amount of varied experiences under my belt, I would just put in a little footnote that before you try to hack your job, make sure you consider why the rules you're hacking were put in place. If you can't answer why the rules were there, you're not ready to break them.

Image credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ryosugi

my Summer of reading. #1: Trust Agents

The weather around where I live has been really strange lately. Mother Nature can't decide if she wants to go the sunny and humid as the Rainforest route or maybe the sunny and perfect weather route. Yesterday I actually saw lightning while the sun was shining! With that in mind, tonight I got home and thought, "Man, if only there was an activity that could one could engage in regardless of weather or location. If only there was SOMETHING I could do that wouldn't involve a computer or some electronic device. Wait! Wait! There IS! It's called...reading.

I've been making pretty good progress in watching television shows and movies that I "should really see." This Summer, I want to read as many books as possible that fall into the category of "books I should really read for my profession."

Top of the list is Trust Agents, Chris Brogan/Julien Smith, authors. I got Trust Agents, disgustingly enough, free of charge. I went to a Summit Up Conference in Dayton, Ohio last October and was lucky enough to see Mr. Brogan speak, and in my take-away bag was Trust Agents. Trust Agents was just a little baby book back then, but it has already exploded to "classic" status. I'd better get on this. As I read these "must" books, I plan on blogging whatever comes to my mind. Feel free to join in the conversation!

Blog #1: Trust Agents

I'm about halfway through chapter 2 right now, and I have to say, so far the book is reading smooth as silk (except for a typo on page 22). There is a lot one can talk about, but I want to riff ever so briefly on the topic of "voice."

Brogan & Smith talk about how amazing the first radio news broadcast must have been to people. Did they believe what they were hearing? If they did, it was probably because the voice they were hearing sounded authoritative and knowledgeable. Brogan & Smith then tie this "voice" to the game of being a trust agent.

If there's one thing I've learned from a great deal of drama from back in the day (not professional and VERY twenty-something), it's that voice in the online world is extraordinarily difficult to read correctly. As a person who tends to speak from the bottom of a tub filled with sarcasm juice, I am acutely aware of this fact. If someone doesn't know you but is reading your words, any sense of decorum you wish to bring to the exchange must reside in your words, which blink at the person from any number of machines. There is no intonation, and sometimes even emoticons don't solve all of the problems that can arise because of this "voice" issue.

The other difficult thing about voice in the online world is that we can all have multiple-personality disorder. To go back to the radio example, some of us would start out sounding like Walter Cronkite and then sort of meander over into sounding like a South Park character. This is because we converse in different ways depending on who we're talking to and where we're talking. I know a person who tweets like a moody adolescent and yet who spins pure gold in a blog. Which voice do you trust? Do you let the tweets turn you off, or does the blog lead you to look for hidden meanings in the tweeting style?

It kind of makes me wonder if we should begin to semi-formally introduce ourselves to people, even though it would never go down that way. But it would be nice to know, on the front end, whether a person's sense of humor is dry like the Sahara, potty-related, or absent. Do you get Monty Python references, or are you more a Miss Congeniality type? All of this frames out our voice, and how people read our online voice determines, I think, whether they will find us to be credible. Am I talking your language whether I mention Cartman or Friedman? Which reference makes you trust me more?

Food for thought. Can't wait to finish the rest of this second chapter!

There are times when (gasp) advertising is inappropriate

When it comes to the news, I generally have become a "hide my head in the sand" kind of person. When Brian Williams or Jim Lehrer warns me that the following scenes may be graphic, I turn the channel. Most of the time.

I make a few exceptions when I think it is necessary. One of the most gut-wrenching things I have ever seen was the families looking for loved ones after 9/11. Then there was the documentary that Jules and Gedeon Naudet put together. I felt obligated to watch these things.

Ever since the rig explosion in the Gulf, I've not just buried my head, but I've been covering it with some kind of mixture of mental block, a touch of denial, and maybe some concrete. I really have no stomach for suffering, and when it's animals, who have no real voice, I just can't deal with it. When it's suffering caused by greed, stupidity, and ineptitude, it's all just a little too much. However, yesterday some pictures finally surfaced of suffering birds, and I felt that sense of obligation again. This is something I need to remember. This is something I'm going to need to tell people about 50 years from now. I need to remember.

It's not just the animals

Of course, I'm not ignorant of the fact that people are already being deeply affected by what's going on here. Fishermen, the seafood industry, tourism -- tons of jobs. Suffering people on the way. Then I think about the Pointe Aux Chenes, who have born witness to American cruelty before. They were pushed to the very edges of our country, to the marshlands of Louisiana, and now, guess whose land is being soaked in the slick of greed and stupidity? And I wonder about things we aren't even talking about yet. For example:

1. How many generations must we wait till fish & seafood affected by the spill is definitely safe to eat again?

2. If the oil does indeed reach all the way up to the Atlantic, how will we possibly be able to track the effects of all of the sludge and chemicals floating out there?

3. Who will monitor these things? We can't even keep cadmium out of Shrek glasses.

Isn't there all this talk about crisis PR?

So as a marketer, I'm looking at all of this, and then I see a full page ad for BP in the Wall Street Journal. As Jay Baer points out in his brilliant Blog on the subject, the ad does not apologize. It's basically going through the motions. Now, as a media buyer and as a person rather familiar with media pricing, I happen to know that an ad like that is worth some serious change.

Maybe if the ad DID include even the slightest sense of guilt or apology, I wouldn't be so steamed. However, it really doesn't. So steamed I am.

There are a lot of things that could have been done with the some $50 million that BP has spent on these kind of pointless ads. Maybe they could have used the ad to ask people to donate to a special clean-up fund. Maybe they could have shared the space with the National Wildlife Federation. Maybe they could have given it to me so I could have purchased $50 million worth of dish soap to help clean up the suffocating birds. Really. That's what I would use it for right now.


Why be mad at BP?

In response to a lot of the "Boycott BP" talk out there, people are saying that BP is really, sadly, no better or worse than any other oil & gas company. And besides, boycotting the corporation will only, per usual, hurt people who are not to blame, like your local BP franchise manager. I've been trying to turn my attention to the National Wildlife Fund, who is asking people to spread the word via Social Media. Social Media which is, by the way, generally free.

I'm not saying that advertising in a crisis is bad policy. But the lesson here is that if you are, say, destroying a national treasure and an entire ecosystem at the same time, you might want to hold out on the "we're working on it" ad campaign until that money has been used to clean up the mess. In this particular case, advertising made BP's situation worse, not better.

Image from MSNBC.