I'm not a PR or social media consultant, so what does this do for me?
I know. We probably do not need yet another "why should I use Twitter" post. But, the topic keeps coming up, and there is no one definitive answer, so I thought I would give it another try.
This evening I was talking to Alan Ball about Twitter. We had first met at Hannah Burr's Productivity session at the MassTLC Innovation Unconference, and tonight we both happened to be at Dan Bricklin's TechTuesday get-together. He asked me about the value of Twitter to someone like him, because frankly: if you are not in the marketing or social media space, it is not really obvious how to use Twitter. If your business is communicating and selling yourself online, there is a clear benefit to being active on social networks of all kinds. Alan, however, is a freelance industrial designer (Alan Ball Industrial Design, Inc.). His customers are usually hardware engineers; they are not likely to be heavy Twitter users. So, why should Alan join Twitter, and more importantly, what should he do once he is there?
Twitter as a golf course.
Even getting people to understand Twitter can be an uphill climb, but Alan mentioned something that Laura Fitton (better known in social networking circles as @pistachio) had said at another session at MassTLC Innovation:
"Twitter is my golf course."
That particular analogy clicked with him. Twitter is a networking tool in the old sense of networking—a way to keep in touch with current and potential business partners in a social setting. (Laura expands on it somewhat here). That's a good way to look at it, but it doesn't change the fact that most of his clients aren't using Twitter—playing golf by yourself doesn't offer a lot of networking opportunities.
Twitter is about reputation.
In my mind, the primary value of Twitter to a business is as a way to build and enhance reputation.
The classic example of this is @comcastcares, a Twitter account backed by one person (Frank Eliason) who spends (as far as I can tell) most of his waking hours answering customer questions for Comcast. He has probably done more to improve Comcast's abysmal customer service reputation than anyone else in the company. He does it by being knowledgeable and transparent. You can watching his responses to customers, and he is very open about network problems, letting you know not only how long until a fix is ready, but why he knows. For example, on 2 October 2008, he tweeted a reply to a customer: "I am not loving your signals, running tests in neighborhood and looks like it could be isolated at your location. I recommend a tech." He also improves Comcast's reputation by being human; one of his tweets from 21 July 2008 reads, "I am home with my 6 month old today because she is sick. I ask our 2 year old if she wants to stay with Dad. She responds NO! GO TO SCHOOL." The human element is something that makes Twitter unique in what has increasingly become an impersonal world of customer support. It is a reminder that you are dealing with an actual human. People's questions are more polite, and more tolerant of any difficulties a service may be having. Companies would do well to not only follow Frank's example on Twitter, but to carry some of those lessons over to their traditional customer support systems.
This approach works for customer support, but there is more to reputation than talking to customers. Reputation is about building a following of people who believe you have something worthwhile to share. I believe this is where Twitter has the most to offer anyone who is not in the social media business.
How do you build a reputation?
One of the first companies I worked for out of school was Apollo Computer. A large portion of Apollo's architecture design and discussion took place on the R&D mailing list. As a new employee (with only one year in the industry plus a highly relevant degree in Anthropology), I was understandably nervous about my skills. I soon discovered the mailing list was completely agnostic as to age, education or background. People would post questions, suggestions, problems; others would respond. If you dove in with a nonsense response, you were ignored (or on occasion, flamed). Fundamentally, though, your reputation was based not on who you were, but how good your ideas were. Twitter provides the same environment, only with a scope which spans companies, countries, and time zones.
When you join Twitter, you generally start by following a few people you heard about online. You can also go to http://search.twitter.com/ to see if anyone is discussing topics you find interesting. As you watch posts from the people you follow, you see half of the conversation, so you begin following some of the people who seem to be carrying on interesting conversations with your contacts. Eventually, you jump into the conversations. The advantage Twitter has over a mailing list is two-fold. First, it scales better: because they are limited in size, many conversations can happen at the same time. Second, people can carry on semi-private conversations which followers can either ignore or contribute to (e.g. anyone following my timeline will quickly discover that my children are attending boarding school this year and that I regularly converse with my oldest about homework, sleep, caffeine, and any other pesky worries a parent has when their child is away).
It is these semi-private conversations that can enhance your reputation. You see someone talking about something. You think you have something useful to add, so you reply. Your correspondent can ignore you, block you (oops!), reply to your post, or decide (usually after looking at your Twitter timeline) that the reply was useful and not a fluke, and follow you. Congratulations! You just improved your reputation. Someone felt what you said had value, and wants to hear more.
Your peers are more important to your reputation than your customers.
Back to the question at hand. How does this help if your customers do not use Twitter? The answer is something that also came up at the MassTLC Innovation Unconference, although in a different context. A number of sessions focused on getting the attention (and hopefully, dollars) of venture companies. The issue is that VCs primarily invest in people, not ideas. They want to know the people they are investing in, but of course that is not always possible, so when they are interested in a presentation, they talk to others in the field and the community. They need to know if you are someone who is trusted and respected by your peers.
When it comes down to it, customers are not that different than VCs, especially when they are dealing small companies. Customers want to know if you have a good reputation. They will find out by searching online of course, but also by using their contacts to see if anyone knows you. Has someone they know on the other coast heard of you, and does that person think you have good ideas? What do people in your field think of you? This is where building an online reputation can make a big difference to your company and your career.
So, if Twitter is your golf course, the people with whom you want to play golf are not necessarily your customers (which is not to say you should not invite them if they do play golf). The people with whom you want to interact are your peers, because it is amongst your peers that you can best build your reputation. (And seriously, interacting with your peers is always good for creativity, whether or not you feel a need to network.) The good news is, if your peers are not on Twitter, you can certainly draw them in—because all these arguments work for them too.
Do not hit the golf course without practicing first.
Finding the proper balance of posting/replies, and social/work discussion is a skill, and it takes time. If you were going to network on the golf course, I trust you would go out and get a few lessons before you get together for a foursome. The same strategy works for Twitter. Your peers and customers are not online yet? Great! You get online and learn the ropes now. As your community grows, you will be the expert who has the necessary skills. You had to learn the right way to communicate by the telephone, and the right tone and frequency to use in email. Twitter is just another communication tool, but as with previous tools, it pays to hone your skills first. If you are in a hurry, talk to someone like Laura Fitton, the leading "golf pro" on Twitter.
About that "micro-blogging" thing.
I am not terribly fond of the term "micro-blogging". Yes, there is an aspect of Twitter that is similar to blogging, and certainly it can be used in that manner. Blogging, however, tends to consist of pronouncements-from-on-high without a lot of conversation. (This can change if you have an extremely popular blog that receives a high volume of comments, but face it, most people do not and never will.) Twitter is more about conversations, discussions, and (yes) arguments. Twitter can be used as a mini-blog, but demonstrating your skills in active conversation will enhance your reputation far more than just posting your opinions.
One final thought.
Do not be shy about sharing your expertise. For every person who benefits from your free advice, there are a dozen more who will remember that you are the go-to person when they need your services.
"I always tell people, your biggest problem in life is not going to be hiding your stuff so nobody steals it. It's going to be getting anybody to ever use it." — George Church
Kee Hinckley with help from Angeles Winesett
Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than "fire code violations," and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying.
This isn't the first of these this week. It really bothers me that the police can arrest people, confiscate their goods, never press charges, and release them all later with no explanation and no consequences. This makes intimidation far too easy. The magic words "homeland security" keep getting invoked.
If the police now have a simple way to hold people without charges, then the people need a simple way to make the police suffer consequences when the power is misused.
I brought this up a while back when Apple first announced the store, but now that analysts are estimating possible revenues of $1+ billion in 2009, I think it's worth repeating.
Once you've gone to the trouble of setting up all the infrastructure necessary to sell, deliver and update applications—why stop with just the iPhone? You've done the hard work, everything else is just incremental costs. The Macintosh is the obvious next step, but there's no reason not to provide Windows applications as well. The market potential dwarfs that of just iPhone software.
The initial folks who stand to lose are places like Kagi and Digital River, who currently provide payment and (in some cases) delivery services for small software vendors. But they don't provide marketing, automatic updates, signed applications, and FairPlay copy protection. Apple is going to roll right over them; but they won't stop there.
See The iTunes Trojan Horse: Selling Applications for more thoughts on where Apple might go.
