Tag Archives: social

Why do you favorite a tweet?

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twitter-favI have seen an interesting pattern while watching people favorite my tweets and others tweets. I have never really been a fan of favoriting tweets because I read them and then possibly open the associated link and it its good I re-tweet it.  I have come to the conclusion there are three reasons at play here – maybe you can think of more:

  1. They favorite a tweet to read later because they don’t have time to read it now but don’t want to lose it.
  2. They favorite a tweet to keep a list of things they like – ie. favorite it. So they can always go back to it later.
  3. Draw attention to yourself from the tweeter.

While I can see the value in 1 and 2, number 3 simply annoys me. I also think if you favorite a tweet, why wouldn’t you re-tweet it? If it truly is a favorite then at some point you should re-tweet it in my opinion, otherwise you quickly fall into number 3.

 

 

Opinion: Non-relevant promoted content on social networks is BAD.

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promotedtweetsYou are on your favorite social site and you search for something. The results come back and guess what? The top result has nothing to do with your search term nor does it even contain your search term.

In this scenario I searched for “IBM” on Twitter and it gave the “Top people” which was good, it was two IBM accounts. But then look at the first entry in the “Top Tweets” section. It’s a CISCO promoted tweet from two months ago and IBM is not even a word in the tweet or the content!  I don’t know about you but this is very annoying to me. I know Twitter has to make money and CISCO and IBM are technology companies but really? What is even more interesting is if I search IBM many times I see totally different CISCO promotions.

So then I got thinking, maybe Twitter is using some kind of analytic engine to actually associate a CISCO tweet with IBM?  Clearly it can’t be completely random, right? Is there no IBM partner or promoted IBM content that would surely show on Twitter before a CISCO tweet?  Did CISCO purchase the promoted rights to the search term “IBM”?

Baiting the Big Guy, the Smarter Shopper has arrived

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BaitingBigGuyCustomers are getting smarter. Smarter about products, brands, services, and most of all the way social works. The younger generation catches on quickly and often thinks outside of the box to get what they want. They call you out when they learn things, often using social media to tout their findings. In this post I outline two approaches “kids” use to figure out about a brand or get that special discount. I say kids but the reality is many internet savvy people are doing these things every day and you as a brand need to understand what happens when you are called out.

The Spam Finder

The first scenario is a disgruntled holiday shopper that all of the sudden started getting many “spam” emails from all kinds of companies. The shopper knew they purchased gifts on four different sites and wanted to figure out which site sold their email. The trick was they created four different emails on GMail and registered one email per site. Within days, two of the email accounts started getting unsolicited emails, that’s 50%! This could be harmful to the brand if something like that goes viral on Facebook or Twitter and calls you out. Be upfront and tell them their information is being sold but if you really want loyalty then clearly claim you will not sell their information. The later seems to be more the mode of operation on most sites because they want to build that loyal customer.

Abandoned Cart? No problem, here is your coupon!

The next story is a very interesting one to me indeed as I have often written about “abandoned shopping carts”, customer dialogs, and coupons. Did you ever wonder why your company has so many abandoned shopping carts? It only takes one person to abandon a cart, get an email with a coupon the next day because of the abandoned cart and next thing you know everyone that person knows is abandoning carts to get the coupons! Yep, you might want to do a few extra checks before issuing that coupon or only issue them under certain conditions like a return customer or a customer that has previously ordered from you.

If you have any stories around “baiting the big guy” I would love to hear them.

Why LinkedIn should be worth more than Facebook

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It’s an age-old adage - Business vs Pleasure.

In a world where athletes make millions and the average business person makes less than $100K it is hard to argue that a market designed for entertainment isn’t big business. However, the customers are clearly in it for pleasure. This is why Facebook on paper is more valuable than LinkedIn – how can you argue with almost a billion users? LinkedIn, however, has over 200 million “business users” and the entire focus of LinkedIn is to “link” you with other business people.

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Can’t remember that person who Sametime’d you?

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There is a cure for that!

With over 400,000 employees, IBM can be considered a very large company and too often I have accidentally closed a chat window or had to reboot and could not remember who I chatted with! Well, there is a tiny little down arrow in the title area for the Sametime Frequent Contacts window in your Notes client. You can select what contacts to show in the list. Notice you have several options:

  • Sametime Frequent Contacts – shows a list of contacts you often chat with.
  • Sametime Primary Contacts – is a static list you define of your “favorite” people.
  • Sametime Recent Contacts – shows in order of date the people you have chatted with. A little different from frequent contacts as it’s just sorted by date.

So maybe this would be a good “badge” if you used this feature in Sametime. I would be interested to know who actually knew about this and who uses it.

Who’s viewed your profile?

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Your LinkedIn profile can either be a positive or negative element in the social world equation. I received some good tips from Ben Martin about how to have a profile that gets results. While I am not looking for a job, I do use my LinkedIn profile to connect with customers and partners and I want to be “found” when I am not out looking for others. I want others to find me. Since I expanded my introduction section I have seen a drastic difference in the statistics around how many times my profile was viewed or has shown up in search results.

If you want to be taken seriously you should have as much information about your skills as possible. People are looking for something out of the ordinary buzzwords. I am sure my profile is not perfect and if you have any advice for me please share!

 

Effectively using #hashtags with Twitter

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One of the features I love about the Twitter application for iPad and iPhone is the use of the hash tag. I follow a particular hash tag during events like #debates, #ibm, #survivor, etc. The applications on the iPhone and iPad under the Discover area allow you to follow the activity for that particular hash tag and quickly use that hash tag in your own posts. When you click the write icon you get the hash tag placed in the entry field automatically for you and highlighted. This is a big time saver and removes error, especially for large search terms or hash tags. Check out the screen shots below where I follow the hash tag #ibm and then click the write button.

Other sources:

Twitter help about Hashtags – link here.
Article – 5 Ways Your Business Should Use Twitter HashTags.