Marketing with Mike Volpe

I have hired 2 people that I first communicated with on Twitter so far.  Here is a video from local Fox News with some tips on using Twitter to find your next job - featuring David Gallant (HubSpot employee) and other local Boston marketing celebrities including Dan Schawbel who has been interviewed on the HubSpot blo.

If you read this blog at all you know that I love marketing data.  There is a new study by Edison Research with data on Twitter out that I was fortunate enough to get a a preview of.  The most interesting stats to me were theones about awareness and usage for Twitter and Facebook (I really wish they had included LinkedIn...).

• Twitter has significantly grown in awareness, where now about as many people have heard of Twitter (87%) as have heard of Facebook (88%)...
• ...however, Twitter is only used by 7% of Americans, while Facebook is used by 41% of American.
• This means that the conversion rate from awareness to usage for Twitter is about 8%, while for Facebook it is 47% - quite a remarkable difference.

This data seems to match the results from the last couple "State of the Twittersphere" reports which said that Twitter was slowing in terms of usage.  Twitter appears to have become very well known because of the celebrities and large brands using it, while lagging in terms of usage with the everyday person.

Download the whole study from Edison Research here: http://www.edisonresearch.com/twitter_usage_2010.php and if you want even more data like this, check out some other marketing data.

This is a guest post by Nick Gundry, who is a co-founder of Smartagious.com, co-founder of Social Media Club Fresno, web strategist and social media enthusiast. He has been working professionally in the web industry for over 12 years in various positions round the world and is currently residing in Fresno, CA.

It's clear that over the past couple of years Twitter, the darling of the tech and media industry, has taken the tech world by storm. While it's not the giant Facebook has become, it's importance in the evolution of social media and the synaptic web has been cemented forever.

I signed up for Twitter on November 13, 2007. I'll be honest it took me a while to see the value. In those first few months I sent very few tweets. That all changed the day I loaded up a Twitter client on my Blackberry and connected my Twitter profile to my Facebook account. As soon as I was mobile I found myself sharing thoughts and perusing my social stream in moments where I had a few minutes to kill — boring meetings quickly became a favorite.

Making Connections, Building Relationships

For me there was always a problem with social networking. I'm inherently shy, it's something I have struggled with all my life and why you'll normally find me hanging back in the corner of the room at public events *pretending* to be reading my emails. Until fairly recently this also extended to the online world, but my use of Twitter had me starting to poke my head out a bit more and connect with people I really didn't know.

In the summer of 2009 I attended Inbound Marketing University (IMU) with my colleague and friend Lisa Alvey (@lisaalvey). It was a series of webinars hosted by Hubspot with some amazing speakers. The value of the content was amazing but more valuable to me was the backchannel happening on twitter during each session. It took me a while to get going and jump into discussions with strangers but I learned a lot by watching Lisa, who's a natural conversation starter. By engaging rather than just listening I made connections with many new professionals working in social media and online marketing. The discussions and new friends made during those sessions still count today. Most of the people I connected with on the IMU sessions are still "friends I've never met". It's a new type of friend for me but I guess it's been around for a long time if you consider pen pals.

Forgetting about Twitter

Twitter is only as good as the skills you develop and the connections/friendships you make while using it. The same goes for Facebook and any other socially aware tools that we succumb to. There's no questioning that the company has produced a market shifting product, ultimately driven by their willingness to open up their platform to developers. The openness that we see echoed in public replies and the random thoughts injected into this world has fundamentally shifted the way we communicate online. It's this openness that's the reason reason Twitter has been so successful. It has allowed us to re-engage skills we forgot about while we were too busy doing "real work". We are re-learning how to communicate freely with people everywhere, in any industry of any stature. We are forging meaningful relationships and learning to break down the walls. Twitter has allowed us to be human again, to be social. Instead of battening down the hatches my metaphorical front door is now permanently open and anyone is welcome to stop by for a chat.

As society focuses on building gated communities and protecting our property there's a significant group of people helping to bring down the walls. Together we are using online tools to build real world relationships via Tweetups, coffee klatches and even real time events driven by location aware apps like Foursquare and Gowalla.

In this hybrid world we are required to be as responsible selecting our relationships online as we are offline, and we have to learn skills to converse and create meaningful friendships and associations for business and our personal lives. The good news is that these new tools allow us a better view of other people's lives, their thoughts, their dreams and that helps us make better decisions about how we present our own relationships and personal branding.

History shows that many of the cultural shifts have been driven by advances in technology and tools. But let's remember that these advances have always been made by groups that understood how to use tools to leverage the power of people (for good or bad). 

That's why I say forget about Twitter and the hype. Change the focus from the tool to the conversation. Learn to leverage tools like Twitter to build communication skills, spread brilliance and provide value to the community we belong to - online and offline.

New data from the HubSpot State of the Twittersphere report shows that Twitter is growing in use outside of North America.

Want to learn more?  Watch the free webinar "The Current State of the Twittersphere".

This is a guest post by Chris Englund who writes "Chris is an MBA navigating Social-Mediaville. Follow him on Twitter: @cgenglund".

Paid tweeting is a good idea: phenomenal measurability, incredible reach and extremely high conversion. But, am I the only one who thinks so?

In the late 1860's Italian chemist, Angelo Mariani engineered a wine that had the ability to restore health, cure the flu, fortify the brain, etc. What distinguished Mariani's from the vast array of contemporary concoctions was the Pope Leo XIII Bump. His Holiness appeared in print advertisement for the wine and awarded it a Gold Medal. Vin Mariani flew off the shelves across Europe and North America. 


Let's imagine my client is selling makeup, not coca wine, and they're advertising in 2010, not 1873. Should I get the larger-than-life Kim Kardashian to influence her 2,875,876 followers:

"My skin is glowing & healthy. Way excited about this new foundation! Pick some up at Walgreens, RT & tell me what you think: http://url"

A Tweet From Our Sponsor

Through Facebook, Email, or Twitter the link remains connected to the original campaign. URL shorteners ensure the destination can't be deciphered and offers instant click-through stats for free.

Tweets go to fans and followers, individuals who have specifically opted in. This isn't an email list, these individuals show their appreciation for the message through intentionally following, replying, and re-tweeting.

Short messages are naturally intriguing and inspire action. Good tweets elicit response and reaction. Unlike text ads in search results, this message is unframed by other advertisements and does not appear distinct from other tweets.

Kim Kardashian is no Pope, this I know, but nearly three million twitterers hang on her every word. She's acquired social status and authority. Like a Pope urging Catholics to the wine shop, I would want Kim calling customers to the makeup counters.

What do you think the value of a paid tweet is?  Leave a comment and let's discuss.

This is a guest post by Marijo Tinlin, who is the principal at Sunrise Business Consulting (@SunriseBusiness) which helps small and emerging businesses and entrepreneurs get traction in business, sales and marketing. Her specialities include all facets of marketing including inbound marketing, content marketing, database marketing and search engine optimization.

Just as you may have a personal Twitter account and one for your business, you may want to separate the Twitter feeds for your company to specifically address certain parts of your business.

This could mean that you separate out the Customer Feedback feed from the Company News feed. Or if you are a technology company, you might want a Tech Support feed so your corporate feed doesn't need to address technical issues.

There are several advantages to this:

1. You can serve different audiences easily, by interest or by geography (include foreign offices)
2. Your readers can set up mobile notices for just the information they want from you
3. You can help your search engine rankings by the sheer volume of your brand being out there because the search engines search Twitter in real time. Here's a link to an example of how this works from Andy Beard @AndyBeard .

Zappos is a perfect example of addressing different customer and employee needs through different Twitter feeds. There are almost too many to list here but besides CEO Tony Hsieh's famous feed on @zappos, they also tweet for the following:

• Inside Zappos @inside_zappos
• Zappos Help Desk @zappos_helpdesk
• Zappos Service @Zappos_Service
• Zappos Pipleline @Zappos_Pipeline
• Zappos Tweetup @Zappos_Tweetup
• Zappos Kids Team @Zappos_KidsTeam

In addition, specific employees tweet as well, including the COO. So you can see they get granular about how they address the needs of customers and employees.

Keep in mind that once you have a customer service Twitter feed, everyone who follows that feed can see the back-and-forth conversations you are having with your customers. In the new paradigm of real-time customer feedback, as a company, you must be prepared for what you'll see and use this feedback to get better, not defensive! Happy Tweeting.

We tried to have a little bit of fun at HubSpot mocking Twitter in an office environment and how some companies are obsessed with it.  How did we do?  is it funny? (I actually can't tell if I laugh because I know all the people, or it is actually funny.)  Do you have ideas for another funny office video?

My friend Todd Defren from Shift Communications is part of a project to help make links in a Twitter background clickable as announced on Mashable.  A worthy goal! 

[Correction: When first published this post said the pricing was $20/month.  I was wrong.  The cost is $20 for a "lifetime" at the time ClickableNow launched.  I still don't think this changes their business problem.]

ANOTHER UPDATE: Clickable now has made some changes and is now FREE!

I have not talked to Todd about this project.  But from my current understanding I think the business model is flawed.  If you pay $20 you can make the links clickable on your profile for anyone who has installed the Firefox addon from ClickableNow.  Here is the big problem.  The business model relies on a large number of users installing an add-on, and there is no incentive to install the add on.

Why would I pay $20 to reach a tiny number of people that have installed the add-on?  I won't.  I also won't install the add on to be able to click on the tiny number of users that have added the clickable links.  Chicken and the egg.

Here are some suggestions for ClickableNow to drive more adoption:

1. Partner with an existing Firefox add-on with a big user base and add the ClickableNow functionality to it to get an instant large base of users who can click on the links.
2. Price the monthly fee for adding the clickable links to your Twitter page based on the number of people that have installed the add on.  Today it would be $0.10 a month or something.  As more people install it, the price goes up for everyone to a max of $20.
3. Same as above, except let the early users lock in the low price.  The first 10,000 installers pay $1 a month.  Then $2 for the next 10,000, up to a max price of $20.
4. Price the links on a CPC (cost per click) basis, so as a marketer I only pay for the clicks I get, and this will scale with the number of users.
5. Give away a simple version of the clickable links for free (maybe one link with no tracking stats) and then charge for more advanced version (multiple links and/or tracking stats).

What other ideas do you have to make the ClickableNow business model work?

I've gotten a bunch of questions recently about etiquette on Twitter.  There really are no formal rules, because lots of people use Twitter differently.  I know lots of people who have rules that are different from me, and that is fine.  Their personal style may be different or maybe they use Twitter "better".  You can use twitter however you want (and don't let one of those "social media experts" tell you differently).

While I do not think there are any formally established etiquette for Twittter, I thought I would share how I use it.  Let everyone know in the comments if you agree, disagree or have other ideas for what twitter etiquette should be.

My etiquette for reading tweets - You cannot and should not read all tweets.  There is just too much volume on Twitter.  Twitter is not your email.  I snack on Twitter a couple times a day for 10-15 minutes at a time.  I read all of the @mvolpe messages and I try to read all my direct messages (DMs).  I do not have any messages or DMs sent as text messages because I don't like to let Twitter interrupt my day.

My etiquette for following other people - I follow people that say something interesting to me, seem to have a high value to tweet volume ratio, talk about me or my content or retweet me, or people I have met in person.  None of these rules are set in stone, but the more of these things that apply to you, the more likely it is that I will follow you.  If you feel like you are left out, just ask me by sending a message like "hey @mvolpe - I love your tweets!  Would you mind following me back?"

My etiquette for following people back - I do not automatically follow people back because the follow me.  I used to, and I found that I got even more DM spam than I do now, and a lot of the following was coming from robots, so I stopped.  I figure that if you followed me and I should follow you back, one of the conditions above will eventually apply to you and you'll get followed that way.

My etiquette for direct messages (DMs) - People who have a lot of followers and follow a lot of people (more than 2,000 of each) get a lot of direct message spam - do not assume they receive or read all of your DMs.  I can't and don't.  I do my best to read them all, but honestly many good messages get buried in there.  Sorry.

My etiquette for retweeting - If I know you well (in person or virtually) and you ask me to retweet something, if it is good I probably will do it.  If you say something remarkable, I might retweet it without you asking.

Download video for iPod and iPhone.

Here is a presentation about using Twitter for marketing and PR I did a while back.  You might also enjoy a whole collection of resources on Twitter for Marketing and PR we put together at HubSpot.