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Posts tagged ‘Facebook’

If Social Media Were a Planet…

Many people refer to their geeky friends who spend all of their time in social media land as “living on their own planet.” Well, apparently now there is a map of that planet.

A recent Mashable story showcased how the social media landscape has changed in a short 3 years. Back in 2007, web comic XKCD published the original “Map of Online Communities”. If you visit the Mashable article, you can see the original compared to the latest rendition. Notice how the relative size of communities and online tools have changed between 2007 and the one created for 2010 by marketing firm, Flowtown, below. Twitter didn’t really exist back then, MySpace ruled the world of social communities, and “Farmville” would likely get you some strange looks.

Though many social media “experts” would have you believe that social media marketing means getting thousands of followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook, the landscape is always changing. I have often said that the tools will come and go, but the principles of marketing in a connected world will not. You still have to create something worth talking about, no matter the community in which your customers choose to talk about you.

October 14, 2010 at 4:23 pm bcritchfield 1 comment

LinkedIn is the Business Lunch, Facebook is the Cocktail Party

One of the most often asked questions I receive is “when do I use LinkedIn and when do I use Facebook?” People, especially business professionals, are looking to take advantage of popular social networks as a way to build their personal networks, add to their “Rolodex”, and build professional relationships that can help them further businesses and careers. So when it comes time to select somewhere to spend your time, the natural question is, “where do I focus?” (Twitter is also effective, but we’ll leave that one aside for now)

The short answer is – both. It seems like a lazy answer, but let me explain why. When you want to build a true relationship with someone in the analog world (not online), how do you typically go about it? You will most likely set up some sort of formal meeting, such as a business lunch. Once you get through the formalities and a couple of business lunches, you begin to build your relationship on more of a personal basis. It is at that point you feel more comfortable talking about family, hobbies, likes and dislikes, etc. This is typically something you would do at a cocktail party or after hours event, such as grabbing an adult beverage together.

If you want to build lasting relationships with high value contacts, start with LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the online equivalent of the business lunch – quick, professional, exchange of business cards, a few probing questions, etc. Once you have built your relationship at the professional level, try broaching the personal realm using Facebook. Facebook is the cocktail party. This is an area where you can ask, “how are the kids doing?”, “how was the fishing trip?”, and “how is the new house coming?”.

Online relationships often mimic what we do offline. Take advantage of all the opportunities you have to connect with people. However, just because you are “connected” doesn’t mean you are friends. As the old saying goes, people do business with friends. We have unprecedented access to each other. Use that access to build friendships, both online and off.

September 16, 2010 at 1:48 pm bcritchfield Leave a comment

Social Media Exhaustion

There are many pundits talking about social media as a “bubble”. Just as we experienced the recent housing bubble or Internet bubble of a decade ago, they argue that social media will reach a point of diminishing returns. While I don’t believe that social media will ever disappear, there is some truth to this argument that we need to take into account.

I remember a mere 5 years ago I was doing seminars on what a blog is, what a podcast is, and how you use these in a business environment. Those seminars consisted of helping people set up their tools and learn how to use them in a meaningful way. Today, everywhere you turn there is a newspaper article, TV news segment, blog, or social network posting with someone’s opinion about social media, how to use it, and where it is going.

I was driving and listening to a sports talk radio show recently and heard “Tweet of the Day” segments and even interviews of athletes on what they Tweet about. Late night comedy hosts have bits about Facebook and Twitter almost every night. Also, since when did it become hip to plaster a “Follow us on Twitter” or “Friend us on Facebook” logo on every possible piece of company literature? When I saw the phrase, “WWJT? What would Jesus Tweet,” I knew it has hit mainstream America.

So what’s next?

I think many people are beginning to experience what I have for about the last year – what I like to call social media exhaustion. It is not that social media are not valuable. They are simply on overload. You reach a point where you feel as if you are the digital version of Henry David Thoreau. You just want to go find a pond somewhere and build yourself a cabin – sans broadband.

Remember when social media used to be the tool we used to escape all the noise of the advertising world? Now social media has BECOME the noise. We have created the very environment we were trying to avoid.

Is social media a bubble ready to burst? Possibly. The more likely scenario is that more of the classically trained marketers, like myself, are going to find ways to use this one-on-one medium to avoid the noise and establish relationships the old fashioned way… by earning them.

If you are tired of the noise, let us know. Bring us your tired, your worn, your huddled masses, and your fed up anti – Mafia Wars/Farmville/”Business Opportunities”/Group Invitations/Cheap Software activists. Come find rest for the social soul and value for your time. Tell me how you avoid social media exhaustion…

August 17, 2010 at 9:30 pm bcritchfield 2 comments

Strategy First, Then Tactics

(The following is an excerpt from the Introduction of the upcoming book Marketing From the Navel: How to Become a Company Worth Talking About and Arm Customers to Spread the Word)

I have a favorite saying by the famed war strategist, Sun Tzu, that says, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” In the marketplace today, there is a lot of noise. Anyone who learns how to use Facebook is all of the sudden a social media “expert” and the bookstore shelves are littered with publications giving their take on what this new reality means from a marketing perspective. Most of this literature tries to tell you what is going on in the market but few give you the tools to do something about it.

If you were looking for a Twitter or Facebook “tips and tricks” book, then you have come to the wrong place. There are plenty of excellent publications available that will help you hone your skills in one particular technology or another. There are some publications that will give you a task list (i.e. “write a blog”, then post it on Facebook, then Tweet about it). Others will give you a list of rules for online etiquette.

Stephen Covey talks quite a bit about “paradigms” in his writings, such as The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. A paradigm is a mental map, or the way in which we see the world. He uses the analogy of an iceberg to illustrate that the tip of the iceberg is our behaviors or our attitudes. If we want to make small changes in life, we work on the tip of the iceberg. However, if we want to make large, quantum changes, we work on the mass of the iceberg beneath the water, which is our character. It is as Blaine Lee states in his book, The Power Principle, “The principles you live by create the world you live in; if you change the principles you live by, you will change your world.”

I believe organizations work the same way. For so many years, we have operated under a certain paradigm. The industry as a whole has been making small changes by simply changing their tactics or their attitude about the consumer revolution. We have merely added social media or viral marketing as arrows in our quiver. I want to do more than change your list of tactics, I want to change your paradigm. I want to change the way you think about marketing.

Secondly, you most likely hear a lot of “noise” in the marketplace about new marketing tactics and how the old ways are dead. The Internet bubble of the late 1990s taught us many lessons about hype versus substance. The biggest lesson of all was that core business principles don’t change, but remain constant. For example, you still need a business plan that will generate revenue at some point (being bought out for millions of dollars because you have a lot of users doesn’t count). Also, cash is still king, and the faster you burn through your venture capital money, the faster you will make it to the unemployment line. This is the reason Amazon.com is still growing, yet Pets.com is a mere sock puppet memory. The Internet bubble taught us that though the delivery mechanisms may change, the core principles stay the same.

While there is significant hype about new forms of marketing, whether it be new media, word-of-mouth, or simply new places to plaster ads (i.e. cell phones, urinals, bases in baseball stadiums), there is a risk in all the hype. People are again forgetting the basic principles of marketing that still apply and are more important than ever. Like core principles in the universe (i.e. do unto others as you would have them do unto you), there are core principles in marketing that never change – despite the tactics. Many of the technology tools available today, such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn didn’t even exist 5 years ago. The tools may change, but if you understand the principles you can be successful no matter what the hot new technology is.

In the following pages, you will hear familiar terms, such as “positioning”, “customer segmentation”, and “customer experience”. Do not be alarmed! These are simply some of the core principles of marketing that, when applied correctly in the new paradigm, are just as powerful and more relevant than ever.

In this book, I introduce two separate models. The first model will help you develop a company worth talking about. This is the strategy component. Before you do anything online or off, you have to create something worthy of our attention, worthy of our passion, and worthy enough to pass along. Otherwise, you will merely create the “noise before defeat.” The second model takes the buzz-worthy organization you have now created, and shows you how to deputize your own customers to take your message out and spread the word. This is the tactical component that will help you achieve a quick “route to victory.”

There were many who were too comfy in the existing power structure and existing paradigm. Marketers controlled the message, the medium, and the content. Today, they are no longer in the conversation, and that elicits great fear in executive corridors and ad agency war rooms. However, those that embrace and implement the following models and principles will find that it is an amazing time in our profession. Never before have we been able to engage with each consumer on a one-to-one basis. Never before have we had the key influencers in our target market gathered together in a central location. Never before has a message been able to spread so quickly.

All you need are the tools… the tools of the revolution.

November 9, 2009 at 2:55 pm bcritchfield 3 comments

Are The 4 Ps Dead?

(The following is an excerpt from the Introduction of the upcoming book Marketing From the Navel: How to Become a Company Worth Talking About and Arm Customers to Spread the Word)

The 4 Ps

In 1960, a concept was introduced by E. Jerome McCarthy that identified the four basic tenants of marketing as Product, Price, Place, and Promotion or, as it is more commonly known, the 4 Ps. Anyone who has ever taken a marketing class from then until now is taught the 4 P’s as the basic overview of marketing. These simple questions are what make up the basics of marketing:

What kind of product are we going to produce?
What is the right price for this product?
How are we going to distribute this product?
How are we going to promote and sell this product?

The purpose of McCarthy’s model was to further the understanding that marketing is much more than selling and advertising. In actuality, Selling and advertising only make up the promotion component of McCarthy’s model. According to McCarthy in his book Basic Marketing: A Global-Managerial Approach, “The aim of marketing is to identify customers’ needs – and to meet those needs so well that the product almost sells itself.” Easy enough, right?

The truth is that today many marketers are declaring the 4 P’s dead, or at least no longer relevant. There are many marketers who have even added more P’s to the mix, such as people, process, physical presence, or (as the word-of-mouth/social media crowd like to say) participation. The big question is can any product almost sell itself, or are there other critical factors in the new reality of the consumer movement?

The Missing Ingredient

While the 4 Ps offer a good basic framework for understanding the all encompassing nature of marketing, they are missing one key ingredient that has been made blatantly apparent by the consumer revolution – the consumer’s involvement in the process. The 4 Ps are segmented like an organizational chart, chopping up the functions of marketing in 4 bite-size chunks. But what about the fickle nature of the consumer? What if what meets their needs well one day doesn’t the next? What if your product is priced correctly, but so are the other 123 options on the market? What if the best person to design your product is the consumer? What if the consumer discovers your product is manufactured in sweat shops in India by 8 year-olds because someone walked in with a camera phone and then posted it on YouTube, their blog, and their Facebook page?

As I mentioned before, the world has changed since advertising’s glory days in E. Jerome McCarthy’s 1960s. However, many marketers have not. I have had the opportunity on many occasions to guest lecture in a university marketing class or judge a high school or college marketing class and am disappointed, to say the least, to see that our marketing education has not kept pace with the changing nature of marketing. Marketing educators still spend the majority of their time on the 4 Ps (with some attention paid to segmentation) and then dive into advertising. Some might say that this is indicative of the average age of the tenured professor, the fact that so few educators are practicing marketers within the wild west of the last 5 years, and some might even say it is a flaw in the system.

According to the existing system, educators lump this new reality of the consumer revolution into “interactive marketing”, because a significant portion of it occurs online. What they fail to see is that we need to re-address the underlying models upon which marketing is based. It goes beyond adding more “Ps”, but needs to address the new reality that we as marketers face today. We need a model that helps us understand the X factor that the consumer plays in the marketing process. We need a model that helps us connect with and engage the consumer in ways that they are most comfortable with. We need a model that helps cut through the clutter that exists in the commoditized markets in which we compete by tapping into the ability of human beings to influence each other.

November 2, 2009 at 12:14 pm bcritchfield Leave a comment

How to Arm Customers to Spread the Word

Up to this point, I have emphasized the Navel Model for creating a company worth talking about. It is critical that you do this piece first. As the great military strategist, Sun Tzu, once said, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Most literature in the marketing realm is about tactics. In social media, people go right to Twitter and Facebook. In advertising they go right to the 30 second spot or the full page print ad. However, in order to have successful tactics, the strategic pieces need to be in place first.

Once you have created an organization worth talking about, the next step is to arm your customers to spread the word. It doesn’t matter what the medium is, the process remains the same. The six steps below work especially well in social media, but also work in public relations, advertising, direct marketing, or any other medium. The six steps below are also not linear but are circular because they are not always done in order. By implementing the steps below, you can better find your target influencers, arm them with tools to spread the word, and amplify their efforts.

Publish – There is an argument in the social media space about whether content is king or conversation is king. The reality is that both are important for successful word-of-mouth. Content without conversation is advertising – it’s one way. Conversation with content is chatter. It is social media strictly for the social benefit. The first step is to publish great content. With all of the tools available today, there are many mediums you can use – it simply depends on your audience. If they have time to read and revisit often, then right a blog. If they are more inclined to download content and listen at a later date, then a podcast may be the best option. If they learn visually and your content is meant to be demonstrated, then produce a video series, or vidcast. For tools, check out WordPress, Libsyn, and YouTube. If you want to know what to write your content about, always think “educate and advocate.” Provide educational insights, how to’s, or insider information. When advocating, look to the cause you created in your Navel Model.
Syndicate – Now that you have produced great content, step 2 is to find all the places you can share that content. Obviously, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or other online communities are a natural fit, however, also consider how you can share this content in your advertising, PR, and direct marketing efforts. Link to it within your social communities. Use snippets in advertising. Use it to pitch editors to cover important topics about your company or industry.
Integrate – The amazing thing about where technology has come from in the recent past is that today, everything talks to each other. That means you can spend less time and get better results from your efforts. By integrating your blog utility with your social communities, every time a new post is created on the blog, it can automatically be posted to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more. Every time you Tweet it can update your status in Facebook, both your personal profile and your business pages. The key with integration is to amplify your efforts.
Converse – Referring back to the argument under “Publish”, once you have great content, the next step is to talk about it. Talk about your content. Talk about others’ content. Talk about a recent lesson you learned in your business. The key is to talk. Dare to be human; to be more than just a brand. The more personal you can be, the more others will grow in affinity for your brand and share it with others.
Help - This is the concept upon which social media was built – people helping people. The Golden Rule is as applicable in social media as anywhere else. The more that you help others, the more benefit you receive in return. This is where you solidify your customer evangelists. It can be something as simple as re-Tweeting their Tweets or something more complex, like writing a blog post about them. You can answer questions on LinkedIn (and syndicate by linking to your content) or you can comment on another person’s blog. These are all forms of help.
Monitor – Lastly, one of the most powerful aspects of social media is that it is infinitely searchable. I can monitor conversations going on almost anywhere in the social web and (politely) engage in the conversation. I can measure how much chatter there is online about a particular brand. I can even automate monitoring so that I am instantly notified when a conversation is taking place. The ability to monitor online conversations is one of the most important aspects of the social web and the reason it is one of the fastest growing marketing mediums today.

With the six steps above, you create great content, share it in as many places as you can, make your technologies talk to each other, engage with others, be helpful, and monitor conversations in order to start the cycle all over again. If you have done your previous work, such as creating a position, cause, culture, and message, you’ll know what to share and converse about. While you may go through the Navel Model only once in a while, the above steps will be a daily to do list.

With the six steps above, you can adequately arm your customers to quickly spread your message for you. Which do you do already and which could you improve upon?

September 24, 2009 at 7:19 pm bcritchfield 3 comments

The Twitter Business Model

To many, that title seems to be a bit of an oxymoron. The question I am often asked is, “how does Twitter make money?” At the risk of writing yet another commentary on the popular micro-blogging network, I think a bit of an explanation behind how Twitter got to where it is today is in order. I think there is a valuable lesson to be learned in how Twitter, almost by accident, became one of the most powerful social media tools in existence today.

As I have explained previously, Twitter is a simple enough concept – 140 characters, follow people and they follow you, answer the question “What are you doing?”. So why did it grow almost 1400% last year? People already had ways to communicate with each other. Isn’t it a bit of instant messaging combined with e-mail? In my opinion, the answer to “why Twitter?” is simple.

The key is that Twitter would not be nearly as useful, nor successful, without the slew of 3rd party tools built for, and that interact with, the platform. If you ever listen to one of the founders of Twitter talk, you’ll hear that it started out, really, as a side project. It was something created so that developers could communicate with each other while working on another project. What they built was a simple communication platform with an open API (that’s geek talk for a “plug” where you can have the software you write talk with the existing software).

One of the first useful tools to pop up was a search engine that could search the entire “Twitterverse” and identify anytime a particular search term was “Tweeted”. Now you could not only talk with people in your immediate circle, but you could actively search out others talking about topics you were interested in. In business terms, this was the golden goose. Obviously, Twitter felt search was critical enough that it actually bought popular Twitter search provider, Summize, in the summer of 2008. You can now go to http://search.twitter.com and search for any topic you would like. In fact, Twitter has even integrated search into its new home page design.

In no particular chronological order, some of the other tools that made Twitter what it is today are:

Desktop Managers: Much the way Microsoft’s Outlook or Apple’s Mail make e-mail so much more accessible, organized, and useful, a desktop manager makes Twitter so much more useful. No longer do I have to use the limited funtionality of my Twitter web page (though it is improving). I can have my Twitter stream divided into columns so I can see all of the people I follow, my replies, and my direct messages in a single glance. In addition, a good desktop manager will fully integrate search so you can automate your conversation monitoring. My two favorite desktop managers are TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop. TweetDeck is great for most, however, Seesmic has many added tools for the power user, such as multiple accounts and the ability to automate many different search terms. Both also integrate Facebook status updates. However, I really enjoy Twitscoop integrated into Tweetdeck so I can see the trending topics in the Twitterverse.

Auto Feeders: This allows you to take any RSS feed and automatically shoot it over to your Twitter account with a link. The king of the heap is Twitterfeed, which allows you to now automatically post things like blog posts to Twitter. This can also be extremely powerful when intergrated with a social tagging service. With the addition of this one simple tool, Twitter has become the most powerful content aggregator in existence.

Follower Tracking: Now you can manage who you follow and who follows you with tools such as Friend or Follow. This allows you to quickly see who you are following that is not following you back. In addition, you can see who is following you but you are not following back. You can get a quick idea of who the Spammers are on Twitter and the ones trying to game the system.If you really want a blow to you self-esteem, you can even sign up for Qwitter, which will send you an e-mail when someone stops following you and the last Tweet you sent so you can see if something you say rubs someone the wrong way.

Automated Monitoring: Closely tied to the search functionality, you can use a service such as TweetBeep or TweetLater to automatically e-mail you whenever someone Tweets about a particular search term. It makes conversation monitoring automatic. In addition, with TweetLater, you can automatically follow or unfollow someone when they follow or unfollow you and can schedule Tweets to go out at a later date.

There are literally hundreds of 3rd party applications built on the Twitter platform, and I use that term for a reason. Twitter has really become the backbone communication vehicle. It is up to you to come up with your own cocktail of tools to make it the most useful to you.

The question, then, always come back to how Twitter makes money. The short answer is – they don’t. However, as noted author and smart guy, Don Peppers, says, “what’s more important today, capital or customers?” The answer is obviously customers. If I have customers, I can get capital, yet it is always the capital that we are measured by, isn’t it?

With 32 million unique visitors last month, which was 13 million more than the previous month, Twitter definitely has the customer base. The fact that there is a feeding frenzy from the biggest brands in technology, such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, and more throwing 10 figure numbers at Twitter goes to show that where there are customers, there will be money. However, now there are a myriad of ways to monetize a customer base of that size. You can:

Monetize with the old standard of display advertising (though I wouldn’t recommend it)
Take the Google approach and go with contextual advertising
Charge 3rd party software vendors to “plug” into Twitter
Charge commercial users for added value
Sell the data to big brands on the back end for focus-group-type purposes
Charge companies to add increased functionality to their home pages
Or any one of a plethora of revenue models

Simply put, the possibilities are endless. So the answer is that Twitter may not make money right now, but it possess something much more valuable – the hearts and minds of passionate consumers worldwide.

What about you? What are some of your favorite 3rd party Twitter applications? What are some of the ways you think Twitter might be able to monetize its customer base?

May 22, 2009 at 3:23 pm bcritchfield 8 comments

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn…Oh My

I recently wrote an article in Eagle Magazine on social media and the 3 major networks. This covers the basics of social media and the reason behind the phenomenon. I have reprinted the article below. Enjoy:

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn… Oh My: Social networking isn’t limited to coffee shops and cocktail parties anymore

There is an analogy I often use in my seminars to describe how social media has not only shaped the evolution of the Internet, it has changed how we interact as a society. When you go to any coffee shop in town, you will find small tribes of people gathered around tables and comfortable couches, favorite beverage in hand, simply chatting about everything from relationships to what was on TV last night. These bands of socialites have simply moved their discussion from a face to face interaction to what can only be described as the “Virtual Coffee Shop”.

The web has become simply one giant coffee shop, with groups huddled around computer monitors discussing everything from green living to cancer to cars. As these conversation technologies evolve and new tools emerge, the need to discuss important topics in our lives any time of the day or night becomes even more compelling. Social media technologies are just an extension of our daily interactions with those in our lives.

Take Twitter for instance. Three years ago this 10 million strong (and growing) social network was merely a gleam in some programmer’s eye. Today it is the fastest growing social network on the planet. According to Mashable.com, the social web’s source for news, Twitter grew 1382% in year-over-year growth as of February 20091. The media is replete with mentions of Twitter. Jimmy Fallon uses Twitter to solicit questions for guests on his new late night talk show. Shaquille O’neal uses Twitter to interact with fans and give away tickets to games. Major brands are searching the “Twitterverse” to monitor conversations about their brands in order to contribute to the discussion.

What is Twitter you ask? It was built on the notion that anyone could describe what he or she was doing at any moment in 140 characters or less. In practice, it has become a valuable tool for building deeper relationships through much more frequent contact and for aggregating content from many other sources on the web. Twitter can turn you into a mini “rock star” by creating your very own media channel to which anyone can subscribe.

Another network experiencing exponential growth right now is Facebook. A mere 5 years old, Facebook currently has 200 million users and is growing at a pace of approximately 1 million users per week. To put it into perspective, if Facebook were a country, it would be the 6th largest in the word based on population. When my 59 year old mother communicates with me regularly on Facebook, you know it has leapt from the land of geeks and bleeding-heart teens to mainstream.

While Twitter is like being in a busy coffee shop trying to hear your friend over many different conversations going on at once, Facebook takes a more segmented approach to online conversation. First of all, your home page is a news feed that shows only the changes that have been made to the profiles of those in your network. Second of all, you can join groups, become a fan of your favorite business or artist, and even play interactive games with those in your network. It can be both a time waster as well as a valuable business tool. In fact, most people will tell you it has even become one giant high school reunion for them.

Twitter and Facebook serve as that unique intersection between your social and professional lives. They can be valuable business tools or simply a way to stay in touch with family and friends. LinkedIn, however, is all business. In its simplest form, LinkedIn is an interactive resume and Rolodex. In practice, however, it is the online version of the business cocktail party, without the constraints of time or space. You can make introductions, provide a recommendation for those you have worked with in the past, and even ask for help from your network on a pressing question you may have. If you are a professional, own a business, or work in an field you would consider a “career” you should be on LinkedIn.

While the networks may come and go (MySpace is on the decline, for instance) one thing is true. Social media has brought the world together. No longer are we limited by time or space, but we can stay in constant contact with those that matter most to us. If you haven’t yet made the plunge, there is no better time to jump on the social media bandwagon. There is plenty of company.

May 5, 2009 at 9:09 am bcritchfield 8 comments

Why Should I Use Twitter?

I get this question a lot, so in an effort to answer the question once and for all, I thought I would write a blog post about it. To start out, I have to admit, I had the same question. I made fun of Twitter for a year before I started using it. Like I always say, I don’t even find myself mildly interesting let alone believe anyone else will. I am going to echo something that you often hear when people refer to Twitter – “you don’t understand it until you try it.”

First of all, I don’t like the way Twitter explains itself. They say it is a network of people answering the question, “What are you doing right now?” However, the people who only do that have few followers since nobody wants to read “I am eating a sandwich” 10 times a day.

The best description for Twitter is that it is THE aggregation tool. It is one of the best tools available for short snippets of content along with links to rest of the content. It is a phenomenal tool for blog promotion. It is a great tool for finding and sharing great content with others. I read all of my news and blogs on Twitter. It is the portal to all great content.

From a marketing perspective, Twitter is like having your own TV or radio station. You have a group of people raising their hand saying they want to receive your content. It is the ultimate in permission marketing. People can choose to follow or unfollow based on much they like your content.

But don’t take my word for it. I threw the question out on Twitter and Facebook and asked, “Why do you use Twitter?” Here are some of the answers:

Norris Kreuger said: “3 reasons: #1: Missed too much that’s not posted elsewhere, #2: Another way to connect with out of town folks, #3 Need a new addiction”

Brandy said: “I’ve got to have SOME outlet for these random thoughts! It iniates conversations between friends that may not normally happen.”

Richard Paul said: “To expand my circle of influence, connect with people interested in my subject matter, and create new friendships.”

Sharon Fisher said, “1. To get and give pointers to information. 2. To keep up with my friends, news, and people in Idaho.”

Tobin Rogers said: “It’s so quick to connect with people within your industry for networking. You can see what other local professionals are working on. It’s just another great tool.”

Jen Harris said: “Because those are the people I REALLY want to be around.”

Tony Courtwright said: “Simple and real-time communication with industry experts.”

Mark Brummett said: “I follow celebs. (none of my friends have it) But I like knowing what people are up to in real time.”

Dave Bourff said: “‘Cause I can.”

Edward Dunn said: “Socializing, networking, sharing business ideas, learning new ideas, letting everyone know what I had for lunch. Cuz who wouldn’t want to know that?!:-)”

Christopher Barger said: “Because audiences are there.”

No matter what your reason for using it, there is value in Twitter for many different purposes. The only thing I can say is try it. I’ll be your first follower.

How do you use Twitter?

Update: I just saw a great presentation on Twitter by one of its founders, Evan Williams, at the TED Conference. Twitter evolved from what they had initially thought it was going to be and this 8 minute talk does a great job of giving you the history of the evolution. Watch the video here.

March 4, 2009 at 12:09 am bcritchfield 9 comments

Top 25 Social Networks

Recently, Compete.com posted new statistics on the Top 25 Social Networks ranked by monthly visits. While many social networks like to tout their number of users, monthly visits is a true measurement of usage. In other words, which social networks are getting used? The numbers are below:

(Credit Compete.com)

As you can see from the numbers, Facebook has taken over the top spot from MySpace and previously little known Twitter has climbed to the third spot after the two behemoths. In fact, if you read the original blog post on Compete.com, you will see a few other graphs that show MySpace’s numbers falling while Facebook and Twitter continue meteoric rises.

What’s even more fascinating is that, according to the CNET News blog, these numbers only represent web browser traffic in the U.S. According to writer Caroline McCarthy, “That means that you won’t be pulling in any international numbers, where most of Facebook’s users are now, or data from widgets or third-party applications, which are how many avid Twitter users access the service. That means that it’s likely that Twitter’s reach is bigger than the numbers indicate.”

How does this apply to you? I have often told people in conversation that I am an early adpoter when it comes to social media, which means I am not the innovator who jumps on every new technology in its infant stages but wait for a certain mass before it has business value. I follow many innovators (such as my friend Tac Anderson or Joseph Jaffe) in order to keep my finger on the pulse of what is the latest and greatest, but look for networks or technologies that can really add value for clients. If you want to know whether a social networks would add value to your business, the 25 networks above are a safe bet.

That being said, I have always held true to the notion that focus is better than mass. If there is a small social community out there that is extremely targeted to your core audience, then you need to be an active participant. Sometimes, these social communities are housed within existing networks, such as the 25 above, and sometimes they are separate. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the web is a collection of coffee shops with people around a table chatting. You need to find the coffee shop that best fits your audience and get involved.

As an old economics professor of mine used to say, “there are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics”. While one thing that blogs are great for is spewing the latest statistics to prove a point, one thing is true. With numbers even close to these, businesses can no longer argue with the value of social media in facilitating and participating in conversations.