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Consider the famous exchange from Pulp Fiction in which Jules and Vincent debate the rationality of abstaining from pork. Jules just doesn’t dig on swine, that’s all, because they’re basically dirty, like dogs.

VINCENT:     Yeah, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal?

JULES:          I wouldn’t go so far as to call a dog filthy, but they’re definitely dirty. But, a dog’s got personality. Personality goes a long way.

VINCENT:     Ah, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true?

JULES:          Well, we’d have to be talkin’ about one charming #@$#%& pig.

Indeed, we would have to be talking about one charming #@$#%& pig. Sure, people can “like” a brand. But most people don’t really like brands. Brands need to be more charming. For that, they need personality. Without it … well, we wouldn’t call them dirty. Just invisible. Like a ship passing in the night, to quote our founder.

In fact, I think to feel human might be the greatest feat a company can pull off. But letting your “you” come through is not an easy switch to throw. It takes knowing the central truth about your offering, and identifying the one cultural tension it can speak to. It takes a team of smart, honest people leading the dialogue.

And it takes a social platform that helps these people shine. To be personable is to be in dialogue. The consistency of traditional media is critical, but social media offers opportunities to be carefully inconsistent, like all humans. How? For starters, by not yammering about yourself all day. By listening. By developing a dynamic social cadence that steps away from your textbook tweets, and dabbles in your fans’ interests and even their voice.

Maybe then they will a) always know what to expect and b) be pleasantly surprised at the same time. Charm can run the gamut, from funny to sincere to Arnold on Green Acres. Some varied examples, below.

I was certainly not surprised to read that Twitter is calling this the year of the Twitter election; former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had said as much in a PRWeek interview last October that stated: “political campaigns, governments, and businesses face a “unique” environment with a completely new set of rules: no-one is immune to society’s doubts and everyone has to be accountable to their users, who are now the ones in control.”

Moreover, we see the impact of users’ voices on Twitter every day - whether occupying Wall Street or voting for The X Factor winners. As social media professionals, we advocate that one of the regular benefits of social media listening for any organization is the opportunity to take a pulse of the community, but in the upcoming election, that pulse can impact media coverage, debates, and candidates in real time.

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Recently, I’ve been involved in helping a client launch a new Twitter feed. This will be their sixth or seventh account on Twitter, all the previous of which are still active and serving specific functions. The process has sparked several discussions among the team — not for the first time — about a question we’ve all encountered: how many different Twitter feeds should a brand really have?
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TIME Magazine’s person of the year in 2006 was “you,” paying tribute to the hundred millions of social media users who framed the information age with user-generated content. Conceived in 2006, Twitter, along with other “emerging platforms,” was evolving and looking for better ways to enable users to share content. Five years later, Twitter includes brand pages in efforts to expand its 100 million user base.

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While the majority of the social media world was getting excited a few weeks ago about the launch of brand pages on Google+ and the timeline feature rolling out on Facebook, last Thursday that other platform of the “Big Three,” aka Twitter, decided it would not be upstaged by the whales in the social ocean. In what’s being seen as a play to fend off Facebook and Google+, Twitter has given itself some new bells and whistles in a major reboot.

Twitter’s revamp comes at a time when they want to prevent their current user base at 100 million from eroding. The reboot consists of a major user experience overhaul of Twitter.com, updates to their mobile application (Twitter has had an explosive increase of 25% in new registrants in 2011 based solely on mobile usage) and an unveiling of two very large new features to help marketers. These include the debut of brand pages and embeddable tweets.

Some of the key takeaways on this revision are the following: continue reading

Multimedia: the foundation of social media. When Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, the emphasis was on the “face” -  the actual image behind the profile. Since the conception of social networking, photo sharing has been the foundation. People have continued to  illustrate their Facebook profile with an array of photos detailing their lives and brands have learned that multimedia is more valuable to their constituents than ever.

But what about Twitter? I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Twitter’s stake in the photo game. Within the many changes that Twitter has rolled out in the past few months (the acquisition of Tweetdeck, the new interface, the “who to follow” functionality), we’ve definitely seen an emphasis being placed on photos.

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With all the talk of Google+ over the past few weeks, one bit of news from another social platform managed to grab some headlines. Twitter formally announced a “Promoted Tweet” ad program. This allows brands you already follow to be at the top of your feed on Twitter.com (surprisingly 78% of users access the platform through the site) instead of in the stream. It’s like getting a fast pass at Disneyworld or maybe the first spot in a television pod. Two thoughts came to mind immediately: 1. I thought that already existed and 2. How do you buy that?

Yes, this did exist. Twitter tried “Promoted Tweets” in a beta form with HootSuite last October though under a slightly different model. The first foray allowed brands to target anyone rather than just their current followers as in the new program. That move was smart because it allows Twitter to sell more ads using their “Promoted Account” option which helps brands find consumers to follow them, then they can send them more messages [preferably at the top of the feed for a fee].

Not many people in the business were very surprised by the announcement, but the media loved it. In fact, although Twitter isn’t the largest social network, hardly has any money, and has lost its founders to other ventures [though both remain marginally involved], it clearly is a media darling. It was Twitter, not Facebook, that got credit for helping achieve a debt ceiling agreement this weekend (although news of President Obama losing 38K followers was also noted). Twitter was also the main means of communication in Egypt when the Internet was shut down (via mobile phone text updates) during the crisis in January. And it is Twitter that gets credit for influencing the stock market.

So with all that attention, a growing usage base (over 200MM now), and now an ad platform, why is Google+ being viewed as competition more for Facebook instead of Twitter? I actually think the media is driving that more than Google. In fact, I’m sure Google would love to supplant both of them.

Twitter’s differentiation is the real time delivery and access to people and companies you don’t really know. Although Facebook updates in real time, the amount of updates per minute is much lower than that of Twitter. And Google+ just doesn’t have the user base to have that effect yet. Ultimately, Google+, like Facebook can bring together everyone you know - though notably in a much easier to use, segmented manner. But it’s going to be hard to provide access to all those that you want to know (or want to watch). We’ll all just have to wait for Justin Bieber to start a circle to find out what the possibilities are.

Now that Twitter appears to have a revenue plan in place with their new and existing ad features (the going rate for a Promoted Trend is reported to be over $100K/day), a plan that Facebook started strongly utilizing a few years ago, Google+ is under even more pressure to showcase how brands can get involved. They will surely use their Adwords technology to deliver text ads just like they do in Gmail (hopefully with more relevance), but the rest of their plan is likely still being developed. In the meantime, Twitter will hopefully open access to Promoted Tweets, mobilize their new sales staff and take marketer’s budgets off their hands. One thing I think we can count on from Twitter is better analytics than Facebook has ever offered, although nothing close to what Google+ surely will offer.

So how can you buy those “Promoted Tweets”? Well you can’t – yet. The official Twitter statement is that they are currently partnering with several charter advertisers and will notify me when it is available which is estimated at “about two months”. “Promoted Trends” is also only listed as a beta opportunity not currently available. You can, however, secure a “Promoted Account” today – and as mentioned before, that’s a great place to start if building your follower base is the goal.

Selling a product is one thing - selling a country is quite another.

When I first started out in the ad biz, I cold called high-level entertainment executives in an attempt to garner business. I’m still amazed that I was able to wrangle clients from an industry notorious for refusing to take anyone’s calls. Over time, I also learned that the sales stalk is a delicate blend of persistence, patience, and positivity.

Among the other things I learned: people can buy into an idea even if there is no idea. Instead, the idea is the sound of your voice and the passion in your pitch. So, when it comes to selling a destination or a country it should be easier, right? After all, a country has a history and a culture. The idea is already right there for you.

Well, yes and no.

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One of the cooler aspects of Twitter is that it gives consumers a direct line of communication with everyone from big brands to small businesses. It also offers them a chance to talk back when they have a question, concern or complaint. And many of us do just that. But how often do we actually receive a response back?

A recent study* indicated eight in 10 Twitter users surveyed worldwide said they thought the answers businesses posted on Twitter were at least as trustworthy as those from regular people, and about six in 10 said they wanted businesses to respond to them on the microblogging service. Clearly this shows that twitter is more than a nice-to-have for businesses – it is becoming an important means of real time conversation with customers.

Actively engaging with your consumers can not only increase your awareness of what’s being said, but also affect people’s buying decisions. According to *Compete Pulse, Twitter is more effective at driving purchase activity than Facebook. 56% of those who follow a brand on Twitter indicated they are “more likely” to make a purchase of that brand’s products compared to a 47% lift for those who “Like” a brand on Facebook. This is further evidence that marketers can drive ROI with Twitter by engaging followers through compelling content. See the chart below for more details on usage outcomes across Twitter and Facebook.

While there are brands out there that have a great process in place, a lot of businesses are falling short. One reason I suspect this is happening is because businesses only pay attention to their @ replies and #hashtag mentions, and are missing out on a lot of valuable conversations. This may leave the consumer feeling unappreciated and ignored – which is bad for business. So what can be done to prevent that?

There are a few easy solutions. The first is doing a search query for your business name on twitter. Any tweet in which that query is included will appear in order of most recent. This method however is manual and requires that someone remember to do it.

Another, more efficient method, is to use a platform like *Seesmic that allows you to setup a query-specific timeline that will automatically populate whenever anyone in the world includes that query in their tweet. This allows the business to know exactly when anyone uses their name but does not @ reply them. But don’t forget to include common negative keywords, to ensure you are capturing all that is being said about your brand, not just the positive comments.

How would you convince your client to get into the conversation, and go one step beyond looking at their specific @mentions?

*http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008440
http://seesmic.com/
http://blog.compete.com/2011/06/13/four-things-you-might-not-know-about-twitter/

We’ve all done it. Some of us often and some only occasionally.

We’ve all been guilty of genericide at some point - or, when a trademark or brand name has become the colloquial or generic description for the product or service, i.e. when someone needs a bandage they ask for a BAND-AID® or they need a tissue but refer to it as a Kleenex®.  Or in the digital age, when people say, “Facebook me!” or “Tweet me!”

Last week the French TV regulatory agency Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (CSA), determined that the French can no longer say the words Facebook or Twitter on television unless they are used in the context of a news story. The result of this is that the audience can no longer be asked to connect or interact via Facebook or Twitter to find out more, post a comment or ask a question.

Another example to consider is that earlier this Spring Twitter requested that one of its most used applications on Blackberry UberTwitter discontinue using the brand name Twitter in their brand name because of trademark infringement and privacy concerns. UberTwitter was quickly renamed to UberSocial and relaunched within days with new positioning that it is a broadened social communication tool.

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