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Twitter: What B2B should learn from B2C on Twitter.

Twitter for B2B: Flexible strategy, adequate social media tone and simple human interaction.

A top brand doing business on Twitter needs to define a clear yet flexible social media strategy and a set of engagement policies for social media interactions. I want to emphasize the flexibility that this strategy needs to have in order to be successful. Your company runs the risk of fading into the silent background if the social media strategy lacks flexibility and creativity but a strategy and policy is definitely a must for a successful andÂ meaningful engagement with your company’s clients.

A much needed compliment to a flexible strategy is the social media tone that you set for your online social interactions. We know from search marketing that people are looking for and willing to engage Â with your brand online. Most importantly they are willing to interact. Social media provides that bridge into your client’s needs and wants.

Many times B2C adopts new communication channels faster than B2B. Twitter is a channel where you have low barriers to entry but once your brand is in there then you need to build up a reputation based on your interactions. Of course, the weight your brand brings in is important but more important than that is your brand’s behavior within the Twitter channel.

So what can B2B learn from B2C?

Be upfront and clear about the reason why you are on Twitter
Be human not corporate
Give credit where credit is due
Respond to relevant questions from your audience quickly, honestly and openly
Seek other relevant twitter users, interact with them and provide them with value
Keep your legal department happy. Luckily many legal departments at some of the companies I have talked to are quite open to let social media bloom.

To close this post I wanted to leave you with a quote from Maeda:

Social media works because we want to be human again.

If you want to sync up with me please follow me on twitter @antonio and give me a shout.

A Social Media Marketing Plan of Attack (blogcritics.org)

SEM (PPC) Ineffective. The industry needs to evolve or slowly deteriorate

By now, most of you have read the New York Times article that highlights EngineReady study about conversions from organic search vs. paid search. (Jan, 2008)

Our study showed that, paid traffic returned a more valuable visitor than that from organic
listings.

The discussion is about the influence of both channels on the bottom-line. This study helps trigger the conversation about the future of search engine marketing.

The fact is that paid search marketing is far from an optimal way to spend ad dollars. It is a passive medium with hit-and-run methodology that has worked well for a while now but it is starting to break down. With CTRs of less than 5% on average and a less-than-optimal long term customer acquisition model, search is becoming the new banner of the online advertising industry. The internet is evolving towards the development of deeper customer experiences and towards a higher level of customer trust . In this new internet panorama, search marketing (as it is today) is at odds with this evolution.

Customers want more. Advertisers want more. Search sits in the middle brokering deals quite efficiently but as publishers realize the value of their own content, search traffic might become obsolete for some, being replaced by traffic from social media sites and word of mouth.

Social networks offer a medium where internet citizens feel comfortable spending their time and interacting withbrands. They are within a circle of trust that provides support, guidance and suggestions about products and services. They know you and they know what you like. They have networks you can tap and they are human. They understand needs.

That is the reason why (at the present moment) targeted search ads do not work within a social network.

Why would people care about a search result when they have hundreds of friends that can help them figure out the best way to purchase a product or service. For instance, it is nearly impossible to find a unique travel experience by searching the internet. There are hundreds upon thousands of results that have zero relevance to what you are looking for. A search engine does not know you.

The question is not if but how the search engine marketing industry is going to evolve.

Twitter and the loss of storytelling

I love stories that start with “Once upon a time …”. I enjoy discovering a new book that engages you and transport you through the ages to times long gone or times that might never be. In a few words, I love the art of storytelling. Â A practice that to this day remains the only way to communicate history to the new generations in remote communities across the world.

Fast forward to the digital world of today and we find that conversation is now the “new” base for forward thinking bleeding edge marketing techniques. Â TheÂ miming of the physical world in the internet. Talking to each other turns out to be the key to a closer engagement with your customers in a bidirectional route. And where there is hype there is money to be made reflected by the amount of experts that surface. Browse twitter for a couple of minutes and you will find so many social media experts, visionaries and consultants that becomes overwhelming.

Blogs most certainly are in the spotlight when it comes to new marketing and conversation as a thought leadership piece in many B2C [and some B2B] marketing campaigns. But blogs are so last year. The new shiny toy for conversation is twitter.Â

However, two things seem to be missing most of the time in this live conversations. Context and purpose.

You can safely start a conversation and follow it through in Twitter with one person or up to ten if you are an accomplished multi-tasker (my wife can probably hold about 30 conversations at the same time). Â Context is kept and purpose is known to you and those that follow you and have the patience to follow your conclusions and thoughts all the way through.

But more often than not, you will find you have half conversations. NotÂ necessarilyÂ valuable conversations because very few people will Â tell you their truly most precious thoughts in a public forum before they are fully baked. Â Our thoughts (the good ones) are worth a lot.Â

In real life you can be powerful and convincing through a story. Through the tone and body language you use. You can be true and be public with a selected group of people. In twitter you work a lot by connecting to people at a superficial level. The question is why do we rather tweet with the person sitting next to you at a conference and share it with the rest of the world (aka your followers).Â

Twitter has broken into 140 char pieces the human quality of story telling. Piece meal story telling. Disjointed, without a solid context and a certain (yet not monetized) value for getting the message out.Â

I use Twitter and I enjoy it more some days than others. I just hope Twitter is just one more tool to the social media box and not the definition of it.

I would hate an internet world where we have half conversationsÂ Â 140 char a time and when you look back there is no legacy through which you can be remembered or a story that can be told about you.

Business Plan for Facebook Application (Hitchhiker Hookup) that came out of WeekendApps

DISCLAIMER: The app was developed in one weekend @weekendapps. All the participants agreed that the exercise was worth the time but due to previous commitments the application was not further developed. We ended in fourth place out of 11 applications. We were behind an app that had been in development for about 12 months (Piki Pages) and another one that needed a few touches not full development (Spring Break). The true winner was Matchtastic. It was developed over the weekend and launched that weekend.

This is s summary of what we want to see for our Hitchhiker Facebook app.

1. Growth and engagement.

These are lofty goals that need to be measured once the application actually launches. Growth, measured in terms of adoption. If the app flops in term of adoption then there is no other metric to be measured.

2. Bottom line.

We all need to monetize to some level to make the exercise viable. The monetization strategy lies in the socialization of this tool and its continuous use. The app will be able to be monetized only if the engagement factor works out. The target client will be a successful online travel service that seeks exposure to a niche audience (25+ individuals with disposable income to spend in discretional travel activities) in the social media market. i.e. Expedia, Kayak, Orbitz, GordonsGuide.

3. Purpose of the app.

We want you to complete a journey to a destination anywhere in the world. A journey that will take you to new places with the help of your friends. You will hitch a ride with friends and friends of friends that are willing and able to introduce you to folks that are in your travel path and that are able to help you reach your destination.

4. Why in the world would I install your app to my facebook profile?

Simple. The more people you give a ride to or recruit for your trip, the more points you will earn towards winning a real life adventure trip. If you are a traveler, you will collect points for every friend you recruit in your journey. Those points count towards getting a real life adventure.

5. What are the adventures you can win?

+ Third prize: Adventure trip to the Amazon Jungle in style.

+ Second place: Luxurious multi-sport adventure throughout South America visiting the highest active volcano in the world, the equator and Macchu Picchu.

+ First place: Costa Rica, Ecuador and Peru adventure trip.High end adventure spas and a super cool and knowledgeable guide that will lead you through an adventure of a lifetime. Truly.

All inclusive adventure with a dash of pampering luxury.

Experience vs. Data. Traditional vs. New Marketing

Trying to make sense of the amount of data that comes in every week is a monumental task. It bends your thoughts in a different way. There is a difference though in analyzing data base on experience and analyzing data based upon asking the questions the data set might help us answer.

The type of analysis that is based on experience only is the easy one. You put your time (for a few years or months, depending on the industry) and then you are entitle by seniority sake to opine about all the work that is being done by your team, because you’ve done it before.

The thing is, for internet marketing, that does not work well. If you have done it before, over 4 months ago, the odds are that the tactic or strategy you used in the past has evolved and changed. That goes for the actual channel as well. For the sake of full disclosure and openness, my last conclusion is based on experience.

How to Succeed in this ever changing environment?

Learn. Evolve and ask questions that have not been asked before. You will probably find yourself struggling at the beginning but the journey to a new discovery always pays off.

Look at the data and use your experience to ask the right questions, not to suggest answers that might be biased.

Are you a senior manager?

Use your experience to guide you in the search for answers but give your staff the space to be creative and test, always test. Sometimes experience based on traditional marketing can skew the questions and assumptions in the wrong direction.

Take a fresh look at the business objectives and ask how can my new channels can provide support to those objectives and use the historical data to setup more successful test environments. Marketing campaigns online are all about testing – they are not traditional marketing. They are not supposed to be thrown out in market to see what happens.

Traditional vs. New Marketing

Turns out you are a brand as well. Not only the [insert yours here]‘s (corporation, agency, startup) brand that you work for is important. You need to take care of your brand name. That will help you perform better in a corporation, agency, start up or even your own business. Much like Jeremiah Owyang. Jeremiah took control of his personal brand through his involvement in social media to raise his profile to the level where job offers from corporations came to him rather than looking for them.

This means, at a very high level, that if someone types in your name into Google you should probably own between 40 to 60% of the page. I am not suggesting you go for “reputation management” services such as naymz.com or others. These services you pay for and don’t allow you a lot of flexibility.

I am suggesting the following:

Take control of your personal brand online and use it to help your day job

Get out there and get a domain that relates to your last name. Install a blog such as wordpress or typepad. Both are open source now. If a domain is not available get a subdomain at wordpress.com

Get linked in at linkedin.com

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