Koroberi Blog

Last week, some of my Koroberi coworkers and I participated in a “virtual event” sponsored by the American Marketing Association titled “Social Media: Cracking the Code for Business Marketers.”

I was armed and ready. I had circled the speakers that interested me and marked the conflicting time slots to remind myself to watch them on-demand later.

One problem: I couldn’t log in. I never even received my login information. Emails to the AMA were answered by an automated message assuring me that my “question would be answered within 24 hours.”

This is the equivalent of a locked entry hall door at a tradeshow. There were others in the same boat on Twitter, calling out to @marketing_power for help. The problem could have been solved faster had any of us known the hashtag for the event (it was #AMAVESM), but even that wasn’t released until after the webinar had already begun. We could “hear” bits and pieces of the presentations from some of the other Tweets, but it was akin to pressing a glass to a wall.

Once I was able to log in (piggybacking on a coworker’s information), I joined my conference and immediately found myself adjusting my speakers. The presenter’s audio was terrible! I had to “turn it up to 11,” my tinny computer speakers threatening mutiny.

There were some strong lessons to be had, though most of it not about social media. It was about how to do (or not do) a virtual event” Now that I’ve had a week to think about this, I’ve compiled a list of guidelines for coordinating and running a virtual event.

1)    Ensure that attendance links are sent out in advance - not when the “doors open.”
Even after I logged in, I had to update my Mozilla and restart my computer. I would have appreciated the chance to update earlier in the morning (even if I didn’t take the opportunity to do so!)

2)    Post the event hashtags to your Twitter account – not within the event!
For those that couldn’t join the conference, it’s nice to be able to catch a glimpse through a Twitter search feed.

3)    Powerpoints are never glamorous – but please give us good audio.
The high-pitched ringing of my speakers made an introductory topic painful to listen to and likely caused several audience-members to tune out.

4)    Consider how the user will interact with the speakers and others.
The presentation was located in a “pop up” window but the chat was housed in my main browser. I lost the presentation “underneath” my browser windows and couldn’t efficiently watch the presentation and chat at the same time.

5)    Always provide the information for on-demand viewing.
Bravo, AMA. The Virtual Event is still on demand here. Yes, that’s a typo in the link. No, that’s not my typo…

That being said, we applaud the AMA for putting the event together. We can’t all dedicate a day in our local city to attend a conference that only has one or two applicable presentations, let alone fly out to Beverly Hills or San Francisco, so virtual events are a helpful and cost-effective alternative.

On a side note, we’re breaking out the popcorn and watching one of these this afternoon!

As the New Year rolls around, everyone inevitably compiles the usual list of resolutions: lose weight, eat better, Tweet more often, watch TV less, etc. Here at Koroberi, we’ve compiled a short list of resolutions that we feel will bring more value to our clients in 2010. Below are my media and marketing resolutions for the New Year.

1. Don’t let clients engage in social media without them knowing why.

Too often, B2B companies see social media as simply creating a Facebook page, adding a Twitter account or uploading videos to YouTube. It’s our job to help them see the big picture. Identifying key objectives, understanding customer behavior and devising a detailed strategy are paramount to any successful marketing initiative, so why shouldn’t that apply to a social media campaign?

2. Create measurable metrics for all social media activities.

Once upon a time, social media was seen as the “immeasurable medium” that offered no identifiable metrics, therefore making it impossible to calculate ROI. Those days are history. With tightened budgets and uneasy executives making marketing decisions, creating quantifiable metrics and demonstrating ROI can make the difference between a successful social media campaign and one that never gets off the ground.

3. Move beyond email marketing.

I won’t go as far as saying that email is dead, but there is an oversaturation of email marketing in the B2B space. What was once an affordable, fairly simple form of advertising has deteriorated into a spam-ridden vehicle utilized by many and read by few. So what’s next? SMS advertising? Social search marketing? Online video sponsorship? How about a return to direct mail now that the receipt of a letter has become a rarity?

We have established a Koroberi Twitter account to promote our brand on the web’s fast-growing social network. Follow us at @koroberi for our updates on B2B marketing, advertising, public relations, agency process and other things going in our world.

With the recent bushfires in Australia, the worst in the nation’s history, social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr has kept people informed and in touch. According to an article from the Australian newspaper, The Age, “Mainstream news outlets, battling to provide comprehensive coverage of the tragedy, have incorporated accounts published on the social networking sites extensively in their reports.”

The people on the ground had better access to the tragedy happening around them, and mobile and web tools gave them the outlets to get this information out to the rest of the world. Even the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, used his Twitter account to talk to his 7,000 followers to provide links to emergency government assistance and ways to donate.

More and more people are tapped into these social networks, and the outpouring of content continues to grow with every major event. Tragedies feel bigger because we can put a human face on them. We read the words and we see the pictures as they happen. And acts of heroism get magnified for the same reason.

It seems that everyone in the mainstream media is talking about Twitter, including NPR, CNN, local newspapers and local tv stations. This is causing lots of people to sign up for the microblogging service. There are over 4 million Twitter users worldwide, and some estimates put growth as high as 5 million users by the end of the year. According to Complete.com, nearly one quarter of all Twitter visitors to the site are heavy users (determined by a very light usage of 6+ visits/month), and another 25% are light users (2-5 visits/month).

But I really want to focus on the majority of users who have only visited one time. These are the people who join, but don’t know why they’re joining. Someone told them to “Follow Me” on Twitter. They sign up, find and follow the person they went there for, and stop. What’s next? This post and some links will answer that question. There is not really any one place they can go to learn about what to do. If you are new to Twitter, first read this post called How to Twitter: The Basics and come back here. That post addresses the mechanics of what to do. I will talk about the why and the how.

The real value in Twitter is in your network. This is especially true if you are using Twitter for business marketing. Your network can provide answers to your questions. They can recommend articles and blogs that have caught their attention. They can forward, or retweet, your messages. They can even tell you what they are having for lunch.

So where does this network come from? You must build it, and you must do so intentionally based on your industry and interests. The basic idea of Twitter following is that when you follow someone, they get an email letting them know. Many people will automatically follow you when you follow them, but not everyone. As Twitter gets more crowded and more commercialized, this behavior is becoming less common. Instead of hoping people follow you, there is a more deliberate approach to building your network.

1. After creating a username that relates to your name, brand, blog, or company, create a full and accurate profile

A complete profile tells a potential follower that you a person, not a spammer. Start by using your real name. Add your city and state for your location. While it is cool to update this field from your iphone or website that tracks your location, this could prevent someone from following you if they don’t know where you are. The web field should link to your blog or company web site. And finally add a bio that tells people who you are and what interests you. There is a tendency to be cute or sarcastic in these fields, but if you are using Twitter as a business intelligence tool to build a network of like-minded professionals, keep the cheekiness to a minimum. The more information you provide in these fields, the more likely you will connect to others in your industry.

2. Grow with balance

As you start to build your network, you want to try to keep your followers to those you following in balance. Twitter is a social engagement tool and you want to think about conversations, rather than broadcasts. Go to Twitter Search and put in a keyword that relates to your business, industry, or personal interest. Scan down the list and find someone tweeting about something you are interested in, or have knowledge about. Click on their username and reply (with the @) to them. This is the conversational part. Now when you follow this person, they will more likely follow you back. If you do this slowly and deliberately, not only will you grow your network of people you listen to (or follow), but also with people who listen to you. This will create a more relevant update stream to others as they decide to follow you back.

3. Find friends, neighbors, and colleagues on Twitter

One of the best uses of Twitter is to build a community in a local area. This is a good way to expand your business network offline. If you know anyone on Twitter, make sure you follow them. You probably are not the first one on your block to be on Twitter. One tool to find local users is TwitterLocal. You can also use the advanced search options within Twitter Search to search by locale as well. As you delve more into Twitter, you will learn that many tools are available that interact with Twitter. Twitter provides open access to “the Twitter stream,” which allows people to develop tools to interact with tweets and users. Watch the tweets of people you follow for talk of new tools to try. Here is one list of tools from Twitips.com, a new site that provides a wealth of information for Twitter users of all experience levels. Make sure to read the comments, where users add many other favorite tools.

4. Follow the High Volume Tweeters

Some of the leading Twitter users follow, and engage with thousands of other users. Ever wondered how they do it. Here’s Chris Brogan’s post how he follows so many folks on Twitter. And here’s a post from Guy Kawasaki on how to increase your followers on Twitter, which I take with a grain of salt. Guy has lots of good ideas and helpful links in the post, so I definitely want to include it here. If the goal is to build your network of engaged conversationalists, many techniques in his post will help.

Leave comments below if you have additional ideas about a thoughtful approach to building your Twitter network.

By the way, are you following me @dgtlpapercuts? It wouldn’t hurt if you engage with me too.

I recently attended a blogger conference and Twittered, or tweeted, my way through the sessions. Some people may still be wondering about the value of Twitter in a business marketing environment, but here is a real world example of five benefits from Twittering through a conference.

1. Online Electronic Notes

As each speaker gave their presentations I Twittered relevant statements. This created an easily accessible, online summary of their talk. I could go back after the conference, and review what each speaker said. So long as the Twitter database remains intact. I have a permanent record of these notes.

2. Shared Electronic Notes

In addition to my electronic notes, other conference attendees were also Twittering the presentations. Many technology conferences have an official tag for all content related to the conference. If everyone uses the correct tag on all their tweets, it is easy to search for tweets, photos and video of the conference for later reference.

3. Live Streaming of Content

There is always a group of interested people who are unable to make every conference. If you tweet the contents of a conference, others can follow along. Several people replied back to me about my conference coverage. It is also possible that people can remotely ask questions of speakers through twitter replies. A text stream is sometimes easier to follow than a video stream, which is sometimes available.

4. Connect with Other Conference Attendees

The easiest way to connect with other attendees is to search for the conference tag. While you may not always meet in person, you can connect on Twitter. Most twitter profiles include a link to a blog or business web site, so this is a great way to learn more about someone you met at a conference. No exchange of business cards required. Follow them on Twitter and learn what there interests are.

5. Building Your Personal Brand

In today’s always connected and share everything you do online, whether you realize it or not, you are building a personal brand. Part that personal brand reflects back to the company you work for and your business connections. In some cases, a personal brand is large enough that it can be leveraged for business benefit. By Twittering at a conference, you tweet authoritative statements about your specialty area. This increases awareness among your network, conference attendees, and others interested in the subject matter. This expands your influence, and can benefit your business.

And finally, it is much easier to fully engage in Twittering a conference if you have a laptop, rather than a mobile device. And a good tool to use is Tweetdeck, which is a desktop application that manages multiple Twitter streams in one view. This makes it easy to follow the conference, while keeping an eye on your regular Twitter feeds.

As we are updating our agency web site, we wanted to incorporate more social media tools into the mix. The topic of discussion today was Twitter. I gave an overview of this microblogging tool to some of my colleagues.

We discussed some basic aspects of Twitter, including how to build a network, the importance of being a person rather than a company, and how to engage with others and become part of the Twitter conversation. In showing off some of Twitter’s shininess , especially the very timely election.twitter.com, we discussed the value of scraping the Twitter stream for business marketing related tweets (a 140-character long post on Twitter) and re-posting them on our site.

This is an easy way to provide additional content and knowledge about business marketing, especially in the B2B space, to our site visitors. This blog is one way to present content from industry professionals, but an automatically updated snapshot of thoughts and links from marketers on Twitter is another. The programming of this Twitter stream on our site is easy, since it would just be displaying an RSS feed of a specialized Twitter search.

Since we are all concerned with SEO, especially with our new site, I wondered aloud how tinyurls are handled when the search spiders crawl a site. A tinyurl is compact and permanent reference link to a site address, or URL, to reduce the number of characters needed to provide a link. According to this post about tinyURL SEO, since a tinyurl is a permanent redirect, these posts would gain the benefit of authoritative outgoing links. This would provide additional positive SEO benefits to our site.

Watch this space for more details as we work out the final details of displaying a relevant Twitter search on this site. In the meantime, check out this great post about 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business for more ideas of using Twitter in your business.

Follow me on Twitter @dgtlpapercuts to see what else I am talking about, and let’s start a conversation.

UPDATE: The stream at the right called B2B on Twitter displays all Twitter posts with the term B2B in them.