In a couple of weeks from now, I’m doing a talk to media buyers on social media. I’ve asked myself a few times already: “What qualifies me as a social media expert?”. There are no official credentials when it comes to social media. But, generally speaking, a social media expert will have a somewhat influential presence in a few social media networks, have perhaps dealt with buying a decent amount of advertising space online and have a pretty high-traffic blog. If this is the case, I definitely don’t qualify! I am an active member in many online social networks but can’t say I’ve really made a name for myself in the social community… nor have I tried to. I’ve been a blogger for less than a year, I just started actively using Twitter and I’ve managed only a handful of ad campaigns on Facebook and GoogleAds. To tell you the truth, I’m taking it slow on purpose. I prefer to first observe, evaluate, then decide if it’s worth my participation in any social network. I guess the fact that I am young, I am an entrepreneur and I spend most of my day online is part of why I was asked to speak to the class… I really do understand social networking and in my evaluation of each online tool, I am looking at the benefits of each and how it relates to a business so that I can share this information with our agency partners and fill in the gap between traditional advertising and the online world. I’m not claiming to be an expert by any means, but I think I have some valuable insight and research to share with those who are less exposed, I guess, to these new advertising and marketing tools. Also, I find people often forget the real purpose of social media and online tools… while most are free to use and have a very personal aspect to them, there is a business model behind each and every tool and their primary purpose is to make money – not to connect you with your old high school buddies. Sorry if that was a shocker 
.
Twitter has been my main focus of research this week and here are just a few things amongst many I’ve learned:
1. Twitter is an information super-highway. It’s very easy to get caught up in trying to read every post, visiting every link that you find interesting and trying to think of what to post yourself to stay involved in the Twitter community. However, if you think of Twitter as driving down a freeway with a hundred billboards to read, you’ll realize that you read some and you miss some and that’s ok. You can always scroll back through the archives of the day to catch up. But you have to ask yourself if you would keep looping around that same stretch of highway over and over until you catch every billboard. No, you wouldn’t. Because that’s a waste of time… remember that. That’s also my next point.
2. Don’t let Twitter waste your time. Not trying to blame Twitter at all here.. this is a case of return on investment in terms of your time. How much time and attention are you putting into Twitter vs the valuable information you’re getting out of it. This might mean choosing a couple of set short time frames in a day that you peek at your Twitter account. If you still can’t control yourself (warning: Twitter can be very consuming!!), there are tools out there to help you manage your time. RescueTime is time management software you can use if you’re really curious how much time you spend on each site and computer application. If your reason for observing the Twitter roll so intently is to see if anyone replies to your post, relax, Twitter has built-in tags for replies that will ensure you don’t miss a thing. See people starting with @lori_elemental? That’s someone replying to my posts and I get notified on my Twitter page when someone does that. I don’t need to monitor my Twitter page 24-7 to see if someone replies to me. Also, if I’ve linked to say, a blog post I’ve written, Google Analytics will tell me the traffic I’ve received from Twitter.
3. A couple of samples of Twitter’s use for different types of businesses:
- This is an article I read last week on how someone used Twitter in a branding experiment. The best part was that he didn’t use a popular brand – he used Mardi Gras in New Orleans as his subject. Check it out here.
- I follow AceBurpeeShow (local Winnipeg morning radio show on Hot103) because well, they are a client of ours and because Ace Burpee is hilarious. With 746 followers, Ace has added another layer to Hot103′s marketing and branding efforts.
- I follow many entrepreneurs and CEOs of ad companies because it’s my business. When they work on something new or find something interesting to share with the industry, it often ends up in one of their Twitter posts. It feels like an industry networking event sometimes. Which makes Twitter a good resource for making connections and hearing about industry-related news.
- walsht is the Winnipeg Free Press’ multimedia editor. walsht has done a great job with posting links to interesting news stories and some Free Press online exclusives. I’m not a Free Press subscriber yet, but their reach to my generation through walsht is a perfect example of how to turn me into one.
4. Using Twitter is not much of an online strategy, if any. Again, remember that it’s an information super-highway and unless you have a couple hundred thousand followers and are considered highly influential (and even then!), your message isn’t getting out to too many people and won’t drive a ton of traffic to your site or get much response worth bragging about. Definitely use it to get your time-sensitive message out there and to let people know what’s going on with your business… but don’t rely on it as a primary or even secondary, for that matter, strategy for getting the message out. If we’re talking GRPs (hello media buyers), the rating is nothing worth even mentioning to your company or client regarding strategy. As a very small part of a much bigger online strategy, then yes.. include it.
5. Twitter is not meant to be yet another IM (Instant Messaging program). I often see replies back and forth between people over Twitter and more often than not, if I’m only following one of the people in the conversation, I’m only getting half of it anyway. This isn’t to say that you should never reply to someone else’s Tweet (Twitter post) because it is a nice compliment when people do that to you when they think your post is relevant. But if you are simply having a conversation back and forth with your friend, direct message/email/IM the person instead PLEASE!!
In conclusion, enjoy Twitter, use Twitter, but don’t let Twitter consume you or your time.
And while we’re on the topic.. follow me on Twitter! http://www.twitter.com/lori_elemental
Tags: twitter
