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I really like Twitter. It has introduced me to countless really smart people that I likely would never have met otherwise. Not only that, it has allowed me to consume information in a totally different way. But I have to admit it can be overwhelming at times so I have developed a few tactics to help me manage the tidal wave of daily tweets. 

I’ll start by saying that I use the Tweetdeck to manage my followers - there are other desktop apps like Seesmic that people seem to like too but I’ve been satisfied with Tweetdeck so I haven’t seen the need to switch . With that in mind these are the little things I do to get the most out of Twitter.

1. I use an autofollow application (Socialtoo). I know there are different points of view on this but I feel that if someone is interested enough to follow me, I’d like to follow them back. That said, just because I follow them back doesn’t mean I follow them closely. Every so often I catch someone saying something interesting in my ‘All Friends’ column in Tweetdeck and I move them into one of the columns that I pay attention to. Admittedly when I take the time to go through who I’ve followed back there are always some people that I have to unfollow. Also, if you use this strategy your direct messages column can quickly become unruly – I never click on a link in a direct message – ever.

2. I organize my Tweetdeck columns into very specific groups. And the same people might be in more than one column. For example, I have one column for Toronto Contacts which is strictly for people in the business community in Toronto that I am interested in but I also have a column for Social Media Folks which includes people from around the world who are involved in social media marketing and communications. There is cross over between these two lists but I can check either or both depending on what information I am interested in consuming.

3. If I am trying to find more interesting people to follow I look at tweets from people I am already interested in and have a look at who they are talking to. I group these people immediately and as I follow what they are saying I will adjust the column they are in or ungroup them entirely if they overwhelm the stream.

4. I turned off the notification window in Tweetdeck. I initially thought it was very cool to have that little bubble pop up with someone’s tweet in it but it is massively distracting. Now, I lay out my tasks out for the day and each time I have a little break I check out what people are saying on Twitter.

5.  I only click on links within tweets that are descriptive. “This is cool” isn’t helpful – although I do have a few contacts whose cool meter I respect and trust but usually I need more than that!

Those are really the top 5 things I do to manage Twitter as a consumer of information. If you have any other tips I’d love to hear them!

Ok, battle might be overstating it. But last night at The Cabbagtown Boxing Club, a formidable group of social media folks duked it out in the ring. Really. Aside from being a cool event from a creative point of view – after a real boxing demonstration (with a real bloody nose) the social media debates took place inside a boxing ring - it was fascinating to hear smart people discussing the various points of contention about social media.

There were three bouts – here’s the summary and my take on the discussions.

Topic #1 – Is the blog dead yet? 

Contenders: Danny Brown, Social Media Strategist, Maritz vs. Michael Cayley, Principal, Social Capital Practice at Context Creative Inc.

This topic was chosen based on a Wired magazine article claiming that blogs are over. I don’t think either contender believed this to be true which made it a bit of a contrived battle.  Despite this some interesting points were made.

Blogs are evolving. Good bloggers are creating a destination for interesting content for their audiences. Their blogs are no longer just rants about the things they are interested in. They offer links to other blogs, video, discussion forums. As blogs evolve it is clear that the microblogging services like Twitter will never replace them because they simply don’t allow for enough high quality content.

Topic #2 Who is best to handle social media (PR, Brand…)

Goodwin Gibson, President, Maclaren MRM was pitted against David Bradfield, Senior VP and Senior Partner, Global Chair, Fleishman Hillard

Bradfield contends that social media at its core is PR and that conversation and the ability to engage and interact with a community are PR skills.

Gibson came out swinging saying that if you are looking at social media in isolation you are missing it.

One of the most interesting points came from someone in the audience who said “PR has always been about managing the message, how can it now be about letting go of it?” Hmmmm. I think part of the problem is an issue of control. Everyone wants to have it and no one can effectively prove that they deserve it.

I recently watched a MarketingProfs webinar where Sandy Carter of IBM talked about how the “Hub and Spoke” model worked for their organization. She explains that the hub is the cross functional team made up of multiple stakeholders across the company. She also asserts that their success is built on the premise that social media isn’t just about marketing – “it’s about sellers, business partners, product development, customer support/service in a holistic fashion, it also brings in market intelligence and all elements of marketing and public relations”. I think letting go of ownership and embracing organizational collaboration sounds like the key here.

Topic #3 Is Social Media the New Customer Service

Contenders: Tamera Kremer, Partner, Teehan+Lax and Daniel Debow, CEO, Rypple vs. David Jones, VP, Hill & Knowlton and Jesse Hirsh of the CBC

This was one of the liveliest debates. Hirsh was witty and over the top about the dangers of allowing customers to have a voice. He referred to responding to complaints in the public domain as incentivizing complainers: “rewarding the sycophants”.

Debow talked about how if you don’t respond to complaints they don’t just go away. And made the equally valid point that those who are loud complainers can also be loud advocates.

“They (your employees) have to be passionate about what they’re doing” was one of the points Kremer made noting that it doesn’t matter if they are communicating on the phone, online or via email.

Both Hirsh and Jones contended that the public space is not the best place to solve problems. That problems shouldn’t be ignored but they should be moved to a private forum. What I thought was interesting was they were making these comments shortly after a discussion on the United Breaks Guitars incident from earlier this year. But in that case, Dave Carroll apparently tried for a year to get United to settle in a more private forum. If United had have done what was right in the first place, the firestorm that ensued would never have been ignited.

What is fascinating too is that what was a critical customer service disaster for United, was a customer service opportunity for Taylor Guitars. Talk about a whole new world.

Well, there you have it. You had to be there to get the full weight of the discussion but I have to say The League of Kickass Business People organized a winner. Loved the event.

Kristy

I was at CaseCamp yesterday. When I registered, I was expecting a typical social media conference. It was billed as an ‘unconference’ but when there are 12+ speakers and 400+ people, it can’t help but be a conference!

What I didn’t expect was that the social media success stories weren’t marketing success stories. In fact, most of the success stories (Know your meme, @sockington, College Humor) are about people doing what they like to do online and about others finding it amusing.

Hey, I’ve read the social media best practise guides that say it’s about the conversation and it’s about engagement but I always thought that marketing should own it. What I learned yesterday is that the conversation and the engagement is what happens when marketing isn’t involved (gasp).

Of course you should. If you are tweeting for business, you have to have a strategy complete with goals and objectives and saddled with metrics that will tell you if you’re doing well.  But there is something about having a structured strategy that doesn’t seem to fit with the personal and interactive nature of Twitter.

The people/companies I like to follow on Twitter sound like people. They don’t sound like ‘the voice of the company’ or like they’re trying to pitch something. There is nice mix of personal tweets so you can get a feel for what they are about and professional info that keeps you current in your field or area of interest.

And it’s clear that traditional metrics don’t apply here. Twitter metrics should sound something like ROE (return on engagement), #hashadoption, twitter handle mentions, replies, retweets, T2C conversion(tweeter to customer). If you measure followers you’re not getting it. Who cares how many followers you have if they’re not interacting with you. Rest assured, no matter how many followers you have, if you’re not interacting with them, they’re not reading your 140 characters.

Back to the personal and interactive nature of Twitter: You’re not going to know exactly how people will respond to you until you’re in the thick of it.  So you have to be flexible and ready to adapt. Embracing the unknown needs to be worked into your strategy and into your metrics. The strategy will get you started, the metrics will guide your activity and your followers will tell if you it’s all working.

Kristy

I love the internet. I spend a lot of time online and a lot of time using search engines. Being able to tap into information on any topic is an enormous leap forward in access to information.

The problem lies in the accuracy of that information. There is a huge assortment of opinions, ‘facts’, studies and ramblings to weed through. I have come to the conclusion that you can basically support almost any opinion you have, you just have to Google it (or Yahoo! it or Bing it, you get the point).

I’ll give you an example. This article says Strawberries are one of the healthiest foods you can consume http://bit.ly/Bw5oM while this one has them on their most dangerous foods list http://bit.ly/rUZzf.

Here’s a marketing example. This article says the best time to send promotional emails is Tuesdays http://bit.ly/69LF6, while this one supports Thursday deployment http://bit.ly/oRSTt.

Is this a problem with the medium? In some ways, yes. But to know it is to love it. Where the danger lies is with people who read something (regardless of medium) and claim it as fact.

It goes back to the old mantra ‘there are two sides to every story’. When people want to prove a point they ignore the other side and focus on backing up their own opinion. For marketers it just shows us how important it is for us to test and get our own results. As citizens, it reminds us to seek information on both sides of the spectrum and remember that the truth usually lies somewhere between two extremes.

Kristy

With all of the podcasts, blogs, email newsletters, social networks etc. to keep us up to date, it can be a full time job just staying on top of the ‘latest’ information.

I thought I ‘d pass on some of my favorites and give you a brief description of why I give them the coveted ‘favorites’ label. I’ll start with podcasts and pass on my other top information sources in a later post.

Top 5 Podcasts (all available through iTunes):

1. Hubspot TV - This is a short, insightful, weekly marketing roundup. Mike Volpe and Karen Rubin are well spoken and just fun to watch. They offer a ‘marketing takeaway’ for each topic they cover and often have great guests who weigh-in with their thoughts on the goings on of the week.  A few weeks ago they had Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz on which was a real treat.
2. Internet Marketing: Insider tips and advice for Online Marketing - This one is a bit longer but the topics tend to be investigated in further depth. Interviews are a mainstay and always feature a topic expert.
3. TEDTalks - TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. The podcast is video taped sessions from recent or past TED conferences. You get a chance to hear from big names like Al Gore, Bill Gates, Jane Goodall and less well-known geniuses who are doing incredible and inspiring work around the world. It is incredibly difficult (and pricey) to get a ticket to the conferences so it is a true gift to be able to watch the videos for free.
4. GeekBrief – I am a technology geek at heart. I love hearing about all of the cool new gadgets and getting Cali Lewis’ take on if they are hot or not so hot. She has frequent ‘on location’ episodes and includes quirky outtakes at the end of the show.
5. boagworld - This is referred to as ‘ a podcast run for those who design, develop and run websites’. The podcast can have a technical side to it so it might not be for every marketer but I have found it to be interesting and chocked full of great tidbits from a designer’s perspective.

I have listened to/watched a gazillion podcasts so I don’t offer this list lightly. If I can watch only a few of the podcasts that I subscribe to weekly, this is my go-to list.

Kristy

I went to see Blue Rodeo (http://www.bluerodeo.com/) with a few friends on Saturday night at The Kee to Bala.

How much I love listening to live music is really beyond description. There is no way to put into words exactly how much pure joy comes from being in a room with a handful of incredibly talented musicians doing their thing.

Seeing them play at The Kee made it that much more enjoyable.  A small venue like that makes you feel like a part of the band. I think Greg Keelor might actually have seen me strumming my air guitar (I’m sure he was considering asking me up on stage but just didn’t want to be unfair to all the rest of the wannabe rock stars).

I’m not sure exactly what it was that made this one of my favourite concerts. Was it because the play list was particularly good? Maybe.  Was it their best performance? They always play well. Was the sound system better than other venues? Probably not.  It’s just that standing in that small bar, being so close to the band, hearing them play the songs I love creates a feeling like no other.

It’s reminds me of that episode of Mad Men where Don Draper is pitching the slide wheel as The Carousel to Kodak – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2bLNkCqpuY.   He talks about people having a sentimental attachment to a product and an even deeper bond, nostalgia.

That must be it. Watching Jim Cuddy behind the piano singing After the Rain was one of my favourite moments of the night. And beyond that just being able to spend a couple of hours being filled up with sound that invokes memories of the past makes you shine from the inside out.

Kristy

Tons of nodding,  great audience interaction and a lot of topics that begged for further discussion. That would be my one sentence description of today’s AMA Roundtable “Marketing in a Recessionary Economy – What does it take to win”.

Here are the points that I found most interesting:

1. Organizations aren’t yet prepared to bet the recession has subsided by increasing budgets for 2010 marketing efforts. The exception was one lucky marketer who was told to come up with a marketing plan in a ‘ideal world’ scenario. I bet when push comes to shove the CFO has a different idea of what an ideal world looks like.
2. CFOs should be at the strategy table with marketing. This was echoed by more than one of the participants. It makes sense given that it is not unheard of for a really great marketing plan or innovative idea to get strangled by a penny pincher in Finance. One participant conceded that now that CFOs are in the room, we likely won’t be able to get them to leave when things turn around.
3. Messaging to our audiences needs to be more about trust and confidence. This is particularly appropriate not just because of the current economic climate but because of the glut of information that people are dealing with on a daily basis. Brenda Truant, of BMO InvestorLine, stressed that trust and confidence needs to reside between clients and agencies as much as between customers and brands. Loyalty is a natural consequence of this type strategy, and who couldn’t use more of that!
4. Steve Mast, of Delvinia Interactive talked about a recent study that they did on the benefit of leveraging existing communities vs. creating a new community from scratch. The study indicated the former to be more effective. I found this particularly interesting given that many of the organizations I work with want to create communities from scratch but the heavy lifting that is required to effectively engage an audience and create brand advocates is daunting given both the human capital requirements and the risk involved . But brand building through engaging in an established community using thought leadership…that’s where the possibilities lie.
5. Organizations want to know their customers better. Analytics and insight is what organizations are looking for. This scenario will definitely work to provide better goods and services for consumers. If organizations are truly interested in knowing more about who their customers are, the fallout should be those customers get more of what they want.

There were a lot of other great tidbits in the session but these were the 5 most meaningful points for me. I work primarily with B2B companies and was fascinated by how applicable the B2C commentary was. There is truly a blurring of the lines that just wasn’t there 5 years ago. Looking forward to the next event…