Blog Archives
Twitter Search Explained
Still confused as to why you would ever use Twitter or Twitter Search to track conversations via hashtags, find new followers and keep tabs on breaking news? The fine folks at Common Craft help paint the picture with this excellent new video below.
-Scott
You’ve Got to Be Tweep’n Kidding Me!
Earlier yesterday my super-savvy CG&A coworker Ryan, passed along a link to a new Twitter tool called TweepMe. When I finally clicked through to the site, it took me all of three seconds to raise an eyebrow after reading this:
What is TweepMe?TweepMe is the fastest way to accumulate followers on Twitter. When a new member joins, every other member automatically follows the new member, and the new member follows them back. The process is gradual and happens over the course of weeks or months depending on the number of TweepMe members.
Noooooo. For real?! As you might guess, Twitter has suspended this application for the time being.
I’m not going to echo everything that’s already been said in Cheryl’s assessment of the site, but I will re-emphasize one key point:
Quality vs. Quantity
I’ve harped on this before, but TweepMe is a perfect example to highlight. Why in the world would you want thousands of people following you with 99% of those followers not caring one iota about connecting with you? If you’re going to do that, you might as well sit and talk to yourself in a mirror.
As Cheryl notes, Twitter works and works well when you connect with others that are in your industry, geographic area or those with whom you build strong relationships with because of similar personal or professional interests.
In a phone call with David Mullen a few weeks back, we chatted about managing the Twitter stream and how he is able to keep up with thousands of followers. The reality of the matter is that most people don’t. It’s simply too much.
Naturally, we keep close tabs on a core group of 30-40 people. Humans aren’t capable of maintaining close relationships with thousands of people. Certainly, there are tools such as Tweetdeck that assist our efforts, but most quality conversation is directed toward those with whom we build personal relationships over time.
Don’t worry about getting thousands upon thousands of followers. Instead, hone in on building strong relationships and making a concerted effort to really connect with your core group.
All in all, I’m glad to see Twitter put TweepMe to rest for now. Seems like the site was a recipe for SPAM disaster.
-Scott
BlogWell Learnings – Part 1
Last week I had the pleasure of joining a couple hundred social media, marketing and business colleagues at the BlogWell conference in Chicago. Sponsored by GasPedal and the Blog Council, the purpose of the conference was to pack eight excellent large corporation social media case studies into one afternoon. Too much good stuff for one post so I’ve broken this into two parts.
Mayo Clinic
Divided up into two tracks, I started the conference listening to Lee Aase speak about social media efforts at Mayo Clinic. I’ve known Lee for over a year but had never had the chance to meet in person. It was fantastic to finally do so and to hear him break down the implementation of their various social media tactics. As you can see, they’ve done quite the job building up support and attention with their online tools (Examples – Facebook, YouTube, News Blog).
Lee harped on the importance of educating and engaging all Mayo Clinic staff in their social media efforts as a key to developing brand ambassadors. To help leverage this effort, they recently launched a feature-esque blog called Sharing Mayo Clinic that highlights personal stories told by patients, doctors, staff, etc. Here’s a great video from Lee discussing the purpose of the Sharing Mayo blog and providing insight on Mayo’s overall social media strategy:
Coast Guard
Following Lee’s presentation, Commander Ron LaBrec of the U.S. Coast Guard talked about what the “coasties” are doing to capitalize on social media. A lot, in very little time.
In just a six-month span, the Coast Guard has done an incredible job cracking through a host of government barriers and regulations to build their online outreach efforts. Currently they are utilizing a tailored Pageflakes dashboard to assist with their listening and monitoring process. In addition, they’ve created an iCommadant blog that is authored by Admiral Thad Allen. The purpose of the blog is to keep service men and women as well as media abreast of the latest news and information from the Coast Guard as well as provide a personal voice for the public to engage and comment.
They’re also over on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Twitter and are currently thinking about next steps to move from simply broadcasting information to increasing engagement with these tools.
Key takeaways from Commander LaBrec were to accept that it will always be a challenge to control content on the Web and to understand that the existing conversation is already taking place – it’s now becoming a risk not to engage in those conversations.
Part 2 is next…
-Scott
