Thank you Amita Paul, CEO of Objective Marketer for providing this fantastic analysis of SxSW and the conversational activity around the event.

The report provided influencer and demographic data and provides insights as to how information is shared during events.  Some of the key findings include:

• Higher followership did not guarantee higher retweets but higher rewteets did require a higher number of followers
• Most active users were with tweets in the range of 1,000 to 100,000.  Activity level of the users with fewer tweets was high. So, It is not necessary that people who are heavy twitter users will be the most active
• Embedding multi-media content may not be as effective a strategy on Twitter as it is on Facebook. The retweets for messages without images (31.6%) was almost double than the retweets received for messages with images (16.8%)
• The number of Retweets is significantly more when the follower /friend ratio > =1.
• Tweets and Retweets can have different activity peaks.  Retweets followed Tweets for about 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Twitter Demographics

As you can see from the chart above, more than 30% of Twitter’s visitors were under 25 up from about 20% of its visitors at the end of 2008; thank you in part to celebrity adoption and the mainstream media mentioning Twitter over 20,ooo times last year on television (can’t find the source). Twitter has also extended its global reach expanding in Indonesia, Japan, Mexico to name a few.

What this means for brands.

Brands now have the opportunity to reach more people in more places  on Twitter.  They need to open up the firewall and be ready to engage in multiple languages by empowering their employee base to serve as brand evangelists. The important thing to remember is that Twitter is just a tool and if the masses move to something else (ah em … Google Buzz), brands need to be ready and try to forecast consumer behavior in order to stay one step ahead of the game.

One model I use when creating strategic social media plans is to follow the Forrester POST Method (People, Objectives, Strategies, and Technologies or tools) in that order; and notice that technologies is considered last.

I use Twitter for business and personal and it works for me. I am careful not to bombard those who follow me with too many marketing messages. I realize the business value of Twitter so I frequently tweet about Intel.  I track my retweets and click throughs to Intel-related content and it’s relatively high; more so than search or display advertising. Volume is low but that’s fine; it’s about building trustworthy relationships.

I wrote a twitter manifesto about a year ago and I don’t necessarily think the same way I did back then; although I still follow the 80/20 rule.  80% of my tweets are conversational, personal or general industry related. The 20% is Intel specific.

I look at every new profile that follows me and I don’t always reciprocate. I usually won’t follow back if their profile is filled with one way bit.ly marketing messages; they have no bio or picture; they are in multi level marketing; they are a self proclaimed social media expert; they are following thousands of people and only have a couple of hundred followers; and of course they have no updates. 

I only follow people I think I can learn from.  I try and provide some level of value to those who follow me as well.

I try and limit the “I am eating _____ “and “I am wearing ____” tweets. 

Once in a while, I check to see who stopped following me and often wonder why.  Sometimes I unfollow back out of spite, sometimes I don’t. 

Twitter is full of egos and I am cool with that.  Frequent retweets of my content often stroke my ego too. I don’t brag about the number of followers I have nor do I ask for people to follow me, except here on my own domain.

I get irritated when people RT a RT that was their original tweet. It doesn’t make sense to me and it feels somewhat spammy. It also bugs me when people tweet the same message twice … could be grounds for unfollowing peeps; even though I may have done this once or twice in my past life.

It used to bother me when certain people follow me; and after I reciprocate, they unfollow me for the sole purpose of inflating their follower ratio. If I come across this, I usually just unfollow. 

The birth of twitter has somehow created a multitude of social media experts who have been working in social media for 10 years or more. I wrote about this in a rant here and still feel the same.

And yes, brands do belong on twitter; but need to be human when doing so.

And since I am here on my own domain, I will humbly ask that if I offer any value whatsoever, consider subscribing to my feed or following me on twitter.

I read about it all time in Twitter and on various social media blogs; how big brands and corporate America continue to #fail at social media. There are hundreds of Monday morning quarterbacks that try and poke holes at various strategies, programs and corporate blogs; and then give their unsolicited feedback on what they (the brand) should have done. Funny thing is … that these same folks would jump at the opportunity to work for and/or consult with the very organizations they criticize, duh.

Some people want brands on twitter. Some don’t and some are not sure. And then there are random peeps who bitch about a product or service, expecting the brand’s Twitter account to start following them and treat them like some celebrity customer because they use twitter and have thousands of followers. I say whatever to that and I will save my point of view for a different post.

We all remember the Amazon fiasco a few weeks ago (if not, read more here: #amazonfail) where they were just about crucified on twitter for I am not even sure what; but apparently they didn’t “join the conversation” fast enough to appease the twitter crowd. Point is, with all the heat, criticism, re-tweets and conversations on twitter, I wonder if it really moved the needle at all. I would be anxious to find out what Amazon’s 2nd quarter earnings are to understand what, if any, the impact really was. My intuition says — probably no impact at all.

Then there was this crazy concept that Domino’s Pizza somehow suffered from not having a Twitter account (they do now). The suffering was actually caused by two dumb a$$ employees who did very nasty things to some food before boxing it up for a customer; and then doing the unthinkable – posting it to YouTube. And to make things even worse, the girl in the video is a registered sex offender. That in itself was the true #fail; which demonstrated the incompetence of the local franchise owner more so than Dominos corporate. It had nothing to do with twitter, in my opinion.

Even if twitter accounted for 10% of the entire social universe, my intuition would still say no. To this day, Walmart continues to be scrutinized and used as a case study in conferences and academia on “what not to do” in social media from those who still preach the basics of authenticity and transparency. Yet, last I heard their sales are still up and in the billions even within the current state of the economy.

I love Twitter. I am addicted to it and I have made some really good friends over the last two years participating in meaningful discussions. I have learned a lot; and I have tried to share just as much. I even get a decent number of re-tweets and click throughs from links that I post (yes, I track it). But, despite twitter’s growth and penetration into the mainstream, I just don’t think it has the power or influence to cause significant damage to brand, if the brand chooses not to particpate. Truth is, it’s the people that will suck the life out of a brand, not twitter, especially if the product sucks or just doesn’t solve a problem.

Last thing. I personally believe that every company/brand, regardless of the size, should have some level of presence in twitter; and be a part of a larger strategy that includes customer outreach and engagement.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to my blog or following me on twitter.
 

Notice the below image; a reply from @jmacofearth (Dell), @JanetATHP (HP) and @AMDOpteronPhil (AMD) all in a row.  I thought it was really cool and it got me thinking about the true nature of social media; and how competitors can follow each other, learn, share and even collaborate at times. And, maybe they aren’t even competitors. Maybe they are friends who work at competitive companies. Yeah, I like that much better.

I had to search the archives for this one; but here is Kevin fron Nvidia poking a little fun at me.

And of course, I cannot forget my good friend Wesley from AMD who will soon be contributing to Conversations Matter. : )

If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to my blog or follow me on twitter. Thanks.

And now, I really don’t care anymore. It was more of an ego thing that I/we/Intel didn’t make a top ten list somewhere.

Don’t get me wrong. Brands are important and the Intel Brand helps pay for my mortgage; but in social media ‘brands’ are less relevant than human beings.  I recently came across this post via a comment left on Conversations Matter from Jesse Liebman.  The post titled, Brands Are Not Allowed To Make Mistakes, But People Are, written by Collin Douma is completely right on.  Here is an excerpt of the original post:

When Scott Monty (blog/twitter) from Ford or Richard (blog/twitter) from Dell make a mistake, they correct it. People respond, trust is earned, the brand is protected and everyone moves on.

When Motrin, Wal-mart, Target, Hasbro, Ticketmaster or any other brand make a mistake in social media, credibility is lost. Consumers lose trust and the offending brand becomes a slide in one of the countless number of PowerPoint decks detailing what *not* to do.

It goes back to humanity and the idea that people relate to people; not a logo or brand.  Of course, there are always exceptions (i.e. I relate extremely well with my beautiful iPhone). But the fact of the matter is that when I think of Dell, I don’t think about Dell.com, the Dell Kiosk in the local mall or even my old Dell Inspirion that died a year ago.  I think of Richardatdell and some of the conversations we have had in the past.

A recent comment from Deb Schultz at the OMMA Social conference hit the nail on the head. During a panel discussion, Deb said, “think like a human, not as a marketer.  There no such thing as a social media marketing campaign. It’s building relationships.”  I hold true to her sentiment; and I am certain that most companies will eventually understand this really basic concept.  I know at at Intel we do and we are still learning every day.

I am on twitter for several reasons. One being, that I am a very social person and I enjoy to Iearn/share/laugh/LOL/LMAO/IMHO/Retweet with all my friends, colleagues and acquaintances.  It’s fun and I am building relationships; and to be completely transparent about the issue, I do post links to Intel related content.  I am just careful that I follow an 80/20 rule (well more like 90/10); whereby 90% of my tweets are personal and 10% are Intel related.  Still though, with everything I do post, I try to be as human as possible.

As I browse through my twitter account and read all the conversations about this and that; I see a lot of humanity in each and every tweet.  It’s actually pretty awesome to see. If there is ever a time that I am not displaying the basic principle of humanity, I hope that one of my friends will call me on it.

ps. not sure why I chose this title for the post. I guess it just sounded good. : )

If you enjoyed this post, please follow me on Twitter.

Like most brands on Twitter, we have a multitude of “faceless” Twitter accounts (example here and here) with the Intel logo that we constantly push one way messages to our followers. But more importantly, we have several notable Intel employees (Josh Bancroft, Kelly Feller, Josh Hilliker and Jeff Moriarty to name a few) that are on Twitter as well.

Intel doesn’t have an official “Twitter Strategy” but it is a tool that many of us use to build relationships, listen, learn from others/each other and get the latest in news.  I would also say that a very low percentage of our tweets are actually Intel related; but there is a reason for that. As I mentioned in a previous post:

• People relate to people, not logos/brands
• Twitter is a place for conversations not one-way marketing messages
• Twitter builds community, connects people and fosters relationships; and in order to do so requires authenticity. It’s difficult to be authentic when hiding behind a company logo

Not entirely sure if my colleagues agree with me on this, but I think we do a pretty darn good job on Twitter.

If you enjoyed this post, please follow me on Twitter.

I just read this article at Mashable that asks the question, Do Brands Belong on Twitter? With the exception of ‘banning or charging brands’ to participate, I pretty much agree with the entire analysis for a few reasons:

• People relate to people, not logos/brands
• Twitter is a place for conversations not one-way marketing messages
• Twitter builds community, connects people and fosters relationships; and in order to do so requires authenticity. It’s difficult to be authentic when hiding behind a company logo

This reminds of a recent post from Rohit Bhargava where he advocates that organizations should hire employees with personal brands.  This doesn’t mean that they should hire narcissistic egomaniacs with personal agendas; but rather focus on hiring people who understand the value of relationships and of course who are proficient with tools such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc.  This will help solve the authenticity issue, in most cases.

Ted Murphy also just wrote about an experience he had with a local Mexican restaurant in Orlando called Pancheros (@pancheros).  In his post, he makes the three following points for “twitter and mortar” type establishments:

• Get employees on board
• Spread the word
• Encourage conversation
• Drive Demand Through Special Offers
• Embrace The Twitter Community

Great advice for all companies: big, small, tweet and mortar.

If you enjoyed this post, please follow me on Twitter.

Tags: twitter, Rohit Bhargava, ted murphy, pancheros, intel social media guidelines, brands on twitter

I also wrote a post in my other blog about making the business case for using Twitter; and cite great examples of how companies (like @Richardatdell) use twitter to build relationships, listen, and participate in meaningful conversations.  I also cite the not so good examples from HP and Yahoo; both of which are my former employers.

I was asked by Chris Heuer to be a part of the Interim Board of Directors for the Social Media Club. I humbly accepted and I am currently the lead for the Media Literacy project. It’s a collaborative effort to create a library of resources that consolidate “introduction to social media” content that will help those who are new to social media get all the information they need, in one place.  I will be working closely with Alex de Carvalho, Howard Greenstein, Richard Binhammer, Des Walsh, and Erica OGrady on this project.  So, if you have any Introduction to Social Media presentations, classes, discussions, cartoons, videos, blog posts etc…, please add it here.

I was also scheduled to participate on a panel at Cisco Systems here in Santa Clara as part of an internal education program.  The panel was about online communities. I was going to present four slides.  Slide 1 was “Why Community?” and was prepared to speak on the following points:

• It’s all about relationships
• Real people w/ real personalities that share “everything” online
• Group collaboration
• Shared participation
• Innovation and feedback – IdeaStorm example

Slide 2 and 3 were examples of how we at Intel use communities both internally and externally to communicate. Slide 4 was titled, “Best Practices and Lessons Learned”:

• Participate!  Not doing so is like being on trial without any representation from a defense lawyer
• The community owns the conversation; don’t interrupt
• Stay involved and don’t abandon the conversation
• Chime in when you need to. Listening may be the only thing you have to do
• Act. If you are getting feedback; do your best to act on that feedback (if it makes business sense)
• Be real and authentic; or it might bite you in the butt

Unfortunately though, I was called to jury duty and had to cancel at the last minute.  Thank you Norys Trevino for understanding and considering me to present; and I look forward to the Social Bookmarking and Tagging panel at Cisco on September 3rd.  I’ll make it this time, for sure.

Speaking of jury duty, this was quite an experience. I was a part of a civil case that involved a rear-end collision that resulted in alleged neck/back injuries.  The case lasted 5 days and we deliberated for about two hours on Friday afternoon. The verdict was that the defendant was not negligent in this accident. It was awesome to see the court dynamics and how the entire process worked. I even met a few new friends on the jury panel. I was the youngest out of all of them.

I am also gearing up for the launch of a new consumer blog at Intel.  I am really excited for this; but there is still a lot of work to do. The blog will be heavily integrated into the Intel “What’s Inside You” consumer web site that highlights real people who have used Intel technology to build/create something.  There are some really awesome stories there.

Lastly, I was able to attend Chris and Kristie’s one year wedding anniversary this past weekend. My wife and I had a great time and I met a lot of cool new peeps, one being Chris Saad, who is also on the interim board.

Event tags: ck888