∞Tangelo

How would you know that people are tunning you out your brand on Twitter?
The number of retweets and replies drop from a few to an irrelevantly low number. You continue to have followers but no one talks to you with @replies and no one asks questions.

I was going through the recommendations for people to follow on my @MrTweet account and I saw a few very interesting names and was surprised by the number of followers they have. As CEO’s of successful companies and thought leaders following them offers quite an insight into their minds from the mundane to the useful and witty. I have uncovered a list of CEO’s that you should follow on Twitter. Since apparently a cat (Yes an actual cat) can get half a million followers on Twitter in less than three months, I thought it might be a good idea to follow folks that actually would add value to your feed.

There are other social media channels that can be better understood and easily compared to a medium that most people understand which is Search Engine Marketing. SEM has a set of “rules and outcomes” that are widely understood across the internet savvy as well as business leadership at companies. For simplicity’s sake the top three we’ll use here are clicks, impressions and conversions. Keep in mind though that we are skipping to the tactical assuming the top level planning and thinking has been done. I, however, think that marketing programs should align to a final goal but should be flexible enough to add new channels. That poses a staffing issue and the flexibility to be ready to face that problem is key to the success of a program. But that topic is a material for a different post. Now on with the tactical.

Jeremiah Owyang posted an entry about more advanced brands that are asking the right questions about Twitter. It seemed too long for a comment on his blog, so I decided to answer it here as I believe the questions are interesting and valid. For more questions follow me on @antonio

I have direct insight on B2B brands using Twitter as I started and managed a Twitter account for a Top consulting company. Now that brand is one of the Top 100 talked about brands on Twitter according to BrandRepublic.

Many times B2C adopts new communication channels faster than B2B. Twitter is a channel where you have low barrier 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 into the game is important but more important than that is your brand’s behavior within the Twitter channel.

Twitter and Google Search. Because you can’t reply to a search engine result. Arguably, Twitter has been able to quickly build the most active and distributed set of third party applications via its API on the web. Most importantly, cheaper that Google ever did. Beyond this point, there is a very interesting (and potentially troubling trend for Google) change taking place in search. People by nature trust recommendations made by people they know or respect. These recommendations factor in making desicions about the biggest and most impactful purchases and actions in their lives. Think, choosing a college, buying a car, shopping for baby clothes and searching for the best schools. Google lacks the human touch. I use Google for research and to get the information, but to solidify my choice I talk to people I know or read people I respect. That is what makes me decide on way or the other. As John Borthwick, CEO of BetaWorks points out in his blog, relevancy is driven mostly by time.

The difference though is that this hippie commune called twitter, that cares about the needy, supports charities and loves Obama also has real fire power and takes action quickly.

I pulled a few posts that I though would be helpful to folks trying to understand the space. This is one by fool.com that provides a very interesting POV on the value of connectedness from a financial perspective. I found this via @ashbuckles who retweeted @milehighfool’s article.

I’ve been debating for a while now whether to add my complete twitter feed to this blog or not. For a lot of you this is a no-brainer because your blogs might be tailored to the more technical audience. But that is not the case with all blogs out there. As a matter of fact [...]

There is a great book that I recommend for some light reading while traveling or vacationing. “Kitchen Confidential” by Anthony Bourdain. He describes in detail how “the line” is taught and learned while working the kitchen. Tough job, but it can be mastered. Hundreds of things going on at the same time. Orders coming in [...]