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?

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