The survey is done, and I find myself unable to push the GO button because I am afraid.  There, I said it.  I AM AFRAID.

I am afraid that nobody will complete the survey
I am afraid that nobody will retweet my posts
I am afraid that I’ll annoy my followers if I talk about it
I am afraid that my voice is so very tiny that nobody will even hear it, and that will hurt

Where did this fear come from?  Since when did I become too polite and too timid to “Just Do It”.  I think it must have something to do with using a personal brand instead of a corporate brand. It’s MY NAME on this project.  If it fails, it’s all on me.  It’s like that feeling when you throw a party and for 30 minutes before people show up you are convinced nobody will.

Or is this a Canadian thing?  Too polite and too timid to “Just Do It”?  Is that why Nike is not a Canadian company? But I digress.

Now don’t get me wrong, I also truly believe that far too many people (especially marketers) jump into things prematurely – throwing up a website without thinking through who the target audience is and what they want to do on it, opening a twitter account and only tweeting about themselves, writing press releases in 20 minutes that are so full of Blah, Blah Blah text that you couldn’t pay a reader to understand what they’re saying.  The real challenge is finding that perfect balance of Preparation and Planning vs Doing It without thinking.

I know I am too far on one side of that continuum.  I have been sitting on this project, coming up with reasons why I should delay – It’s the 4th of July, Summer is a slow time, It’s raining, I have a headache – you get the idea.  Then I watched Danny Brown run a live 24 hour Tweetathon to raise money for charity. Now that took guts. He had no idea if anyone would show up and 24 hours is a lot of dead air to fill if they didn’t.  But he did it, he pushed the GO button. I actually have no idea how successful he was but I think that’s my entire point.  I have no idea how successful his event was but I am left admiring him for not being afraid, for believing in what he does, for going out and asking people to participate, for Just Doing It.

I  have never met Danny except on Twitter,  but he was my inspiration, the one thing that got me over my fear of failing, the person who virtually put his hand over mind and helped me push that Go button.

There – I’ve done it.

Now we’ll see what happens but for better or for worse, I am no longer afraid.

I hope you’ll join in and take the survey.   This survey is for us, the curious people who use social media.  It will tell us more about us, who are we, what we have in common.  It’s a not-for-profit project, all the results will be shared with anyone who asks and all the questions were contributed by folks like you and me.  Instead of a prize, I have also decided to donate $1 for every completed survey to Danny Brown’s 12for12K charity of the month, so why not do some good – for you and for others.

1. Your CEO or client says “Let’s get a blog going”. You ask who is going to blog about what. They say “Nobody has time but we can just summarize or talk about other people’s blog posts”.

2. Your CEO or client says “Let’s get on Twitter”  You say OK, what will we tweet?”  They say “Our press releases and product info of course, what else would we tweet?”

3. Your CEO or client says “Let’s get on Twitter” You say OK, who will tweet?”  They say “Everyone in the company, but we’ll need legal to approve each tweet first.”

4. Your CEO or client says “We need to get everyone talking to each other” You say OK, what do you have in mind? They say “We just sent out a link to < latest corporate social media platform >, that ought to do it.”

5. Your CEO or client says “Let’s get on Twitter” You say “OK, are our customers and partners on twitter?”  They say “Why does that matter, we just need to say we use social media”.

Here are 5 questions to ask when they say they need to get some of that social media stuff going.

1. What part of our corporate strategy does this contribute to? This is the key question, ask it first and don’t go any further till you agree on the answer.

2. Who is the intended audience? Are the people we want to reach (customers/prospects/partners/influencers) using it?  If they aren’t, who do you think will hear and engage with us?

3. What do we want to accomplish with our use of social media? Is it to nurture leads, provide support, do market research?  Knowing this is critical.

4. Are you prepared to invest in this program for the long haul?  Social media is not free, just like real life relationships they need ongoing nurturing and engagement from the company.

5. How will we know that our programs have been successful? Spend the most time on this question – be sure everyone agrees before you start.

The answers to these questions will tell you 1) if you should be using social media, 2) if you are ready to use social media, and it will start you down the path to deciding what form of social media makes sense to you.

The bottom line is that social media, like all marketing programs needs a plan, a budget, and an ROI. It is not just something you just start “doing”.  We know it, now we just need to share this knowledge before too many companies waste more time and money.

Twitter pros, this article is not for you but feel free to forward it to all the newbies you know.

Twitter newbies, come on in – the water’s great!

As you join the revolution, you will most likely experience these 4 stages. Fear not, you’ll get through them quickly and hopefully painlessly.

Stage 1 – Feeling Lonely

After I opened my Twitter account I sat there and looked at the page for awhile. I sent my first tweet, which I am 100% sure is pretty much the same first tweet as the majority of first timers. It was something like “trying out this twitter thing” or “hello out there”. Nothing came back. I am not sure if I was expecting anything but I do so long for instant gratification, so after about 30 seconds, I tweeted again. Carefully answering the question “What are you doing right now?”, I said something totally inane, like “eating a peanut butter sandwich”. Nothing came back. I decided to be bold and tweeted “This twitter thing sucks”. Nothing came back. Twitter was clearly over-rated as a connecting, friend-making, info-sharing tool. I left, feeling unloved – didn’t come back for months.

Stage 2 – Finding the patience to Listen

You don’t have to talk to enjoy Twitter – a recent study says 90% of people just listen. But to listen you need to find people to follow. There are two ways to do this – find lots of people fast (and you’ll eventually spend lots of time unfollowing them later), or find fewer of the right kinds of people more slowly. Both methods work, and the bottom line is that you need to follow people to hear anything.

So at the very least, here is what I recommend to get started:

• First pretend you have lots of followers already and tweet a few things, what you are working on, a link to an interesting article, something interesting you saw or heard – this is important as people you follow may look at your recent tweets to make sure you are legit and interesting before they decide to follow you back.
• Then consider any or all of these tactics:
• Go to www.wefollow.com to get some ideas on who to follow
• Use the Find People feature at www.twitter.com to follow your favorite celebrity, chances are they are on Twitter
• Follow your friends, and the thought leaders are in your space, the ones whose articles you read, whose blogs you follow
• Follow local twitter users – try www.twellow.com/twellowhood or www.nearbytweets.com for local
• Follow your favourite brand – like @starbucks, @sears
• Follow your favourite news outlet – like @cnnbrk or @theonion
• Do a search at search.twitter.com for a subject you are interested in, like marathon if you are interested in running, then check out the people who are tweeting about running and follow the ones you find interesting. You can also try www.twollow.com for ideas.
• Follow @guykawasaki – many call him annoying but he does tweet about a wide range of often interesting things. You won’t be bored.
• Let Twitter give you some ideas http://twitter.com/invitations/suggestions
• Use www.MrTweet.com for ideas. I’ve heard that he’s slow but gives good ideas. He took 28 days and came back with nothing when I tried it.
• Follow me – @lpartner.  Chances are I will follow you back and I’ll certainly respond if you mention me in your tweets.

Now you’ll have all kinds of tweets coming in, and best of all, a lot of these people will automatically follow you if you follow them. That’s important if you ever want to talk and be heard.

Stage 3 – Getting a response back – the hardest stage

To get a response, you need to be heard. To be heard you need people to follow you. While some people set up their accounts to automatically follow anyone who follows them, others are more discerning. Once they hear about you, they’ll go to your page and check you out. They’ll read your bio (very important that you complete this carefully with words that both reflect you and might interest others – use all the space available!), and they’ll look at your last few posts. They are trying to figure out if you are interesting and genuine and if you’ll add to their twitter experience. Do the same in reverse. When someone follows you, check them out and if they look interesting, follow them back. Don’t worry about following too many interesting people, when you get to Stage 4 you’ll know how to manage thousands of follows.

Now is definitely the time to start tweeting. In my humble opinion a good mix of tweet types is often the most appealing:

• Show your personality – if you just ran your first marathon, tell everyone, they’ll be happy for you. Others searching on keywords like “marathon”, or “running” will see your post, check you out and start following you.
• Add value to the community – If you just read an interesting article on-line, tweet a comment and a link to it so others can enjoy it as well. People checking you out will be looking to see if you bring value.
• Pass it on – Re-tweet (RT) other people’s interesting tweets. RT is like forwarding an email to your group of followers. People love to see their tweets forwarded on – think the feeling you get when someone hands you a small gift. Most people track retweets and most will follow anyone who retweets their posts.
• Reply to tweets to show that you are interested in engaging – be genuine. People who check you out will want to see that you are engaged and not just passive.
• Don’t pitch your product or services, at least not very often.
• Don’t say anything you wouldn’t shout out in public to a group of strangers.

This is the longest stage. Be patient. Keep going, don’t stop, be consistent. Enjoy others’ tweets and add your own over time. Celebrate the times that someone retweets or replies to your tweets.

Stage 4 – Build out and enjoy your experience

Now you’re following a lot of people and chances are you’re worried about missing replies or tweets from the people you enjoy the most.

Get organized

• Use a twitter organizer like www.TweetDeck.com or http.Seesmic.Desktop.com so you can easily see your RT’s and replies. It also lets you group selected people so you can focus your limited time on the people you most enjoy.

Keep following people –

• Check out who your friends are following and follow them too.
• Look at who your favourite followers are talking to in their tweets and check these people out. If your faves like them, you might too.
• Follow those who follow you whenever possible. A recent tweet from @stephanie2c – “Twitter Term of the Day: Twitterphoria – The elation you feel when the person you’ve added as a friend adds you back.”
• Look for #followfriday referrals from people you enjoy
• Use a tool like www.topify.com, which will send you by email enough information on everyone new who follows you that you can decide on the spot if you want to follow them back. If you do, it’s as easy as replying to the email

Take your twitter experience up a notch

• Enrich your sharing experience with photos using www.twitpic.com
• Organize a tweet up and meet your twitter friends in person
• Track your twitter grade on twitter.grader.com or your rating on mrtweet.com

And with all of this, it’s just the beginning of a journey to finding friends, getting feedback and ideas, learning, generating new business, getting your ideas heard and much more. We’re all learning as we go, some of us just have a few months head start.

Oh yah, and why not follow me at @lpartner!

I like examples, especially simple ones that you get right away. My simple mind perhaps? Whatever the reason, because I have been researching successful B2B uses of Twitter lately I thought I would share this example of how Twitter helped at least one company make a sale.

It all started with a tweet (once upon a tweet?) from someone I follow.

I hadn’t heard of crowdSPRING so I checked them out. Now it turns out that I was a few days away from using their competitor 99Designs (who by the way I had used before with great results), but hey, if my colleague who I respect was using Crowdspring, perhaps they were better yet?

So I replied to him

And here is where it gets interesting. I did not hear back from him but within 5 minutes I got tweets from both 99designs and crowdSPRING, literally seconds apart.

Clearly they had staff running an ongoing search for any mention of their company, and both took the opportunity to try to influence my buying decision – good on them!

Takeaway #1 – every company should be using Twitter to search for opportunities to react to people who are shouting out that they are interested in their products.

It’s also interesting that while my tweet clearly referenced 99designs, I shortened crowdSPRING to cspring, which means they were searching, not just for their company name but for at least one variation of it – really smart.

Takeaway #2 – search not just for your exact company name but for variations on it, especially abbreviations.

Lastly, as I read their tweets it also occurred to me that a new skill is required from salespeople – pitch your product in no more than 140 characters, but more on that in a future post.

Both companies reacted quickly and well and I did end up buying a service from one of them, you gotta believe the ROI on that tweet was huge! You don’t need many people like me to justify using Twitter, at least for this purpose. By the way, I am curious – which one would you have picked based on the tweets from the companies?

Things got even worse 11 days later when Twitter support finally got around to sending me an email (luckily to my new email address!) that included a new password and that I should log in and reset it. Predictably the password didn’t work and I got a message saying that my account had been temporarily disabled because of too many attempts to access it even after one attempt. After using up my entire swear word vocabulary in a 5 minute rant, I finally calmed down, used the “forgot my password” feature and had a new password sent along. Of course, had I not sorted out my first problem with a dead email address on file, I’d still Twitterless almost 2 weeks later.

Consistency and reliability are key components of any marketing campaign, yet to have your Twitter voice suddenly silenced without warning, to suddenly stop answering those who tweet you is sending a message you don’t want sent. Your followers may interpret this inactivity as being unreliable or non-responsive, certainly not the brand positioning you’ve worked hard to establish.

So for those of us who use Twitter as a business tool, not just a plaything, a few interesting lessons come to mind.

1) Make sure the email you have on file is one that you have full and complete control over.

2) Write down your password and keep it safe (yah,yah, I know)

3) Encourage the makers of any great software product to develop a revenue model to keep themselves healthy. I know this might seem all wrong, but healthy companies make better products. I’d happily pay Twitter to take my support call and get me back up and running quickly.

In the meantime, I’m back tweeting again and happy to be here, even if my feathers are a bit ruffled.

The Aggregator – They scan, skim and read more quickly than most human beings. Passionate about their particular interest area, they want others to share their interest and happily tweet links to interesting articles. Strangely they don’t retweet as much as you’d think, perhaps because they feel their value comes from the effort they put in to find the articles in the first place – I bet they can all tell you how many tweets they’ve made in the past week.

What’s great about them?  They can be like your own personal clipping service, reading through the dross and finding the juicy interesting articles for you.  A good one is invaluable.

When Aggregators go bad… they figure out how to use the “tweet this” button on bogs and news sites and suddenly the frequency of their tweets increases to a feverish pitch.  They begin to think they can only win if they tweet more than anyone else and they start tweeting more and more obscure articles.

The Life Detailer – You know them instantly when you get to their twitter page, not a single link to be found among the vast numbers of tweets that chronicle their life in minute detail.  The entire twitterverse knows what sports team they follow (not the San Jose Sharks anymore – hah!), what they had for breakfast (nothing as they were too hung over) and what they think of their mother-in-law (not much and someone should tell them tweets never die!)

What’s great about them?  Any time you think your life is really boring, you can reassure yourself knowing there are more people out there with even more boring lives.

When Detailers go bad – They become obsessed with adding more and more detail for public consumption. They are exhibitionists with a keyboard and we just know that they have tweeted while doing their business in that room where computers simply don’t belong.

The Promoter – every tweet is about their business, every tweet.  Did I mention it was every tweet?  Subtlety is not their strong suit.  Rarely are they subtle but they are almost always incredibly persistent. You know them, they are the same ones who email you a press release every 2 weeks and who don’t include an opt-out.

What’s great about them? – You gotta admire their persistence.

When Promoters go bad – they start bad, don’t they?

The Commentator – they tweet their opinions, they tweet other people’s opinions, they tweet what they see happening around them.   They are like bloggers with an attention deficit, not quite ready to invest the time required to write an entire article or post with a beginning, a middle and an ending.

What’s great about them?  Finally some original content on twitter – often funny and sometimes insightful, if you can find and follow a good one, you’ll be well rewarded.

When Commentators go bad – they start to turn into Detailers, it’s a fine line folks, walk it carefully.

The Socialite – you know them by their ratio of @ in their tweets.  A ratio of more than 1 @ per 100 characters is a dead giveway.  They are the folks who love CC: on email, the more people who hear them the better. They tend to be the group leaders and organizers and twitter is just another tool to help them communicate.

What’s great about them?  If you find a socialite you respect and admire, you may also enjoy their friends and want to follow them too. Click through to their @names and see who is out there, I’ve added many people to my follow list using indirect referrals from Socialites.

When Socialites go bad – They start tweeting famous people, suggesting that they actually have a relationship with these famous people, thereby increasing their Twitter status (would that be a twatus?)  At some point you gotta wonder why anyone wants to follow one side of a bunch of conversations even if it’s with a celebrity – it smacks of teenage girl talk. (Note added May 5th, my friend Gillian Brouse (@gilliebee) pointed out that every twitter account owner can choose not to see all these replies with only a few simple key strokes – RTFM Lynda!)

The Lurker – representing the majority of twitter users, the lurker follows many people (a friend told me yesterday he follows over 1000 in each of two accounts) but doesn’t tweet himself.  Lurkers are sponges, soaking up knowledge, gossip, news and creating impressions of people and products without feeling any need to contribute to the noise.

What’s great about them?  I believe they are the reason Twitter will survive long term. They are the ones who actually absorb what’s going on. They will eventually become your customers, your champions, your supporters and even your friends.  Let them lurk, and if they ever tweet you, be 100% sure to tweet them back.

When Lurkers go bad – they start to think they know you from reading your tweets. Recently I was being twitter-stalked (OK, I made that term up).  A lurker came out of the closet at a business event I was at and felt that his understanding of my tweets afforded him some special privileges.  It was a bit weird talking to someone I had never met who felt he knew me well.

So what’s the best Twitter type?  It really depends on why you use twitter.  I started out using twitter to learn from others who shared my business interests so I tend to follow Aggregators and Commentators, especially Commentators who have figured out how to add value in their tweets. I also learned that Aggregators and Commentators who don’t add any personal life tidbits quickly become boring, so a touch of Life Detailer is really important to me too.  I really don’t enjoy Socialites but I can see how others would.  The good news is that there are so many people out there that matching followers to your most comfortable twitter style is just a question of patience and persistence.

Why not follow me at www.twitter.com/lpartner and you can tell me what type I am and whether it works for you.

Technorati Profile

Curious, I asked him how best to reach him when I was at work and he was at home. His answers, in order of preference were:

• Text me (I always have my phone with me)
• IM me (it’s the first thing I do when I get home from school and it works when I am playing video games on TV too)
• Facebook me (yes Facebook is also a verb)
• Phone me (but not on my cell phone cause it costs me money)

I then asked him how many emails he gets each week – “about 3-6 per week depending on the time of year”, and how many he sends each week – “about 1-2, mostly for school projects and only because Facebook won’t let you send attachments”.

He went on to tell me that aside from sending school attachments, email was just for “work”, adults he doesn’t know well (like his boss) and adults who weren’t on his friends list on Facebook.
If he is the norm, this next generation of kids has completely different internet usage patterns than their parents and these behaviours have huge implications on marketers. How do you reach an audience who live in a connected world but who are trained to talk only to their “friends”. Here are some predictions on what this might mean to consumer marketers in the future:

1)    Opting in to receive product information on facebook is not exactly a staple in the average marketer’s toolkit but it may be the most important next evolution in consumer marketing.

2)    On the bright side, these kids have a lot of “friends” – we’re talking many hundreds and they can reach out to all of them with only a few keystrokes so the possibilities for word of mouth marketing are huge.  Looking for teenage product champions now may well be the best course for the future.

3)    Mobile marketing will also gain in importance as teenagers are glued to their smart phones and i-phones. Special deals and especially electronic coupons may appeal to teenagers with big appetites for “toys” and not much income.

4)    If my son is any indication, these kids love their “apps” so product placement in mobile entertainment applications will surely be something to consider.

3 out of 4 marketers are using Twitter?  Hmmm…. that seemed really really high to me so I decided to do a bit of research myself.  I belong to an association of 1800 marketing executives based largely in the US.  The association keeps a directory of member twitter accounts which currently numbers 181, or 10% of members. Now it may be that only a few actually bothered to submit their twitter Ids but 10% is not a very high number.

This gave me a sample of at least 181 twitter accounts set up by marketers. I then went through and viewed each and every twitter page to determine if they were actually actively in use. My definition of active was more than 10 updates, with at least one of those updates submitted in the last 21 days.

I learned that only 55% of those twitter accounts were by my definition, active, or in other words, about half of the marketers who “used Twitter” to set up an account, had either never posted to it or had not posted anything for the past 3 weeks.

If the list of twitter accounts in the directory accurately reflects the total twitter accounts held by the group’s membership, then active twitter usage among this group of marketing executives is closer to 5%.

Admittedly “using Twitter” can mean many things. If I have set up a twitter account just to see what it’s all about, am I using Twitter?  If I search for my brand on twitter, am I using Twitter?

If you read Stelzner’s study and started to feel like you were really behind the times, perhaps you can rest more easily.  If only 5% of marketing executives are really using Twitter to actively promote their brands, you have some time.  Time to learn more, time to decide if Twitter is right for you, time to build it into an integrated marketing strategy, time to do it right to get the best return.  BREATHE!

I realized pretty quickly that Guy is, shall we say, prolific.  Tweet after tweet arrived almost 24/7. I started reading, and reading, and reading, and would often look up from my computer to realize that hours had passed while I was absorbed in Guy’s world of fascinating, often eccentric posts. I was addicted – who wouldn’t want to be handed already reviewed articles that range from “a wristband that tells you when you’ve had enough sun” to the “45 people to follow on twitter” to “cool iphone apps”.

As time went on my addiction grew. I was checking twitter and ignoring email.  I became the trivia queen thanks to Guy but then my friends expected me to have something fascinating to talk about every time we talked and I spent even more time following Guy.  Soon my kids were begging me to leave my computer just long enough to make dinner once every 3 days or so (ok, so at this point I admit to some exaggeration – but just a bit of exaggeration).

The bottom line was that Guy Kawasaki was killing me – and quickly too.  My work was suffering, my kids were suffering and I was giving up my daily runs to spend more time on-line.  I had to do something. I tried cold turkey – didn’t even look at twitter for an entire 24 hours.  Too painful.  I tried ignoring his tweets and focusing on the other people I was following.  His headlines distracted me every time.  Finally I summoned up my willpower and sat there with my finger poised over the “Remove” button. Minutes went by.  I simply couldn’t bring myself to give him up! There had to be a better way.

Now I use TweetDeck and I filter Guy’s tweets into a single stream, and once a day (after my work is done), I grab a coffee, set the alarm on my iphone and disappear into Guy’s world.  I haven’t quite kicked the addiction but I now think I might actually live through it.

And yes I’d love it if you followed me: http://www.twitter.com/lpartner