I’ve had 3 Facebook accounts. As I write this, I only have one active account remaining – and it’s hanging by a thread. I’ve started, built, activated, deactivated, and deleted multiple Facebook “pages” for businesses or the like. I had a MySpace account before anyone around me did. I was a little later to the show with Facebook. Currently, I use Twitter to connect to everything in my social media world, including Facebook – but more on that later.

Facebook and I have never really had a good relationship. It never was bad, per say, but it never was good. It was a lot like that person you dated because it was convenient to do so. The relationship was nothing special, but until something better came along, there was no really good reason to end it either.

When Facebook showed up, shortly after MySpace became the craze, I was leery. The elitist attitude that boldly proclaimed, “you can’t join our network unless you are a part of this group or that group,” was not one that I really took fondly to. I was a part of multiple social circles, many of which had nothing to do with the schools or groups that were “allowed” on Facebook. If I was going to take the time to join a social network, I wanted it to be one where everyone I knew could take part.

A shifting attitude about your privacy (and not in a good way)

Eventually, as most people know, that all changed. The elitist attitude, however, has not. It is still running rampant, making Steve Jobs and Apple look like a tepid child. This is clearly understood by a quick look at the sweeping changes in their approach to privacy as outlined here by the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Facebook Privacy Policy circa 2005:

No personal information that you submit to Thefacebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa 2006:

We understand you may not want everyone in the world to have the information you share on Facebook; that is why we give you control of your information. Our default privacy settings limit the information displayed in your profile to your school, your specified local area, and other reasonable community limitations that we tell you about.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa 2007:

Profile information you submit to Facebook will be available to users of Facebook who belong to at least one of the networks you allow to access the information through your privacy settings (e.g., school, geography, friends of friends). Your name, school name, and profile picture thumbnail will be available in search results across the Facebook network unless you alter your privacy settings.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa November 2009:

Facebook is designed to make it easy for you to share your information with anyone you want. You decide how much information you feel comfortable sharing on Facebook and you control how it is distributed through your privacy settings. You should review the default privacy settings and change them if necessary to reflect your preferences. You should also consider your settings whenever you share information. …

Information set to “everyone” is publicly available information, may be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), is subject to indexing by third party search engines, may be associated with you outside of Facebook (such as when you visit other sites on the internet), and may be imported and exported by us and others without privacy limitations. The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” You can review and change the default settings in your privacy settings.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa December 2009:

Certain categories of information such as your name, profile photo, list of friends and pages you are a fan of, gender, geographic region, and networks you belong to are considered publicly available to everyone, including Facebook-enhanced applications, and therefore do not have privacy settings. You can, however, limit the ability of others to find this information through search using your search privacy settings.

Current Facebook Privacy Policy, as of April 2010:

When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. … The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” … Because it takes two to connect, your privacy settings only control who can see the connection on your profile page. If you are uncomfortable with the connection being publicly available, you should consider removing (or not making) the connection.

Your data on Facebook (status updates, pictures, etc) is not really yours

The most recent action by Zuckerberg was to make access to your information on the site publicly available, whether you like it or not. The new privacy controls do 6 major things with regard to connections you make using the Facebook “connect” feature (that should piss most people off, though it won’t because they are probably oblivious to them):

1. Facebook will not let you share any of this information without using Connections. You cannot opt-out of Connections. If you refuse to play ball, Facebook will remove all unlinked information from your profile.
2. Facebook will not respect your old privacy settings in this transition. For example, if you had previously sought to share your Interests with “Only Friends,” Facebook will now ignore this and share your Connections with “Everyone.”
3. Facebook has removed your ability to restrict its use of this information. The new privacy controls only affect your information’s “Visibility,” not whether it is “publicly available.”

Explaining what “publicly available” means, Facebook writes:

“Such information may, for example, be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), be indexed by third party search engines, and be imported, exported, distributed, and redistributed by us and others without privacy limitations.”

1. Facebook will continue to store and use your Connections even after you delete them. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there. Even after you “delete” profile information, Facebook will remember it. We’ve also received reports that Facebook continues to use deleted profile information to help people find you through Facebook’s search engine.
2. Facebook sometimes creates a Connection when you “Like” something. That “Like” button you see all over Facebook, and now all over the web? It too can sometimes add a Connection to your profile, without you even knowing it.
3. Your posts may show up on a Connection page even if you do not opt in to the Connection. If you use the name of a Connection in a post on your wall, it may show up on the Connection page, without you even knowing it. (For example, if you use the word “FBI” in a post).

Zuckerberg’s offer that you can’t refuse

Facebook has become so interconnected with our daily lives (the 400 million of us that are on the site anyway) that the leverage they have to keep us on the site is overwhelming. People are using the site for a lot more than just catching up with old high school friends. They are playing games with their friends, sharing pictures of their life, and so on.

We are all social creatures. We like to be popular, we like to have friends, we like to be able to reach out and connect with someone when we are lonely. This nature of connectivity in humans is a foundational principle on which Facebook’s success is built. And right now, the closest thing to providing a better solution is Twitter – which almost everyone has heard of, but almost no one understands how to use. Because of this, there are 10 main reasons, according to Nicholas Carlson at Business Insider, that you’ll never quit Facebook even if you think you want to:

1. You’re not going to go back to waiting an hour to send an email to 30 people with 40 photos attached.
2. How will you remember anybody’s birthday?
3. How will you stalk your college boyfriend’s new fiancé?
4. Without Facebook what are you going to do when you don’t have a friend’s email address or phone number? Facebook messaging blows. But at least you know you can reach anybody who has a Facebook account.
5. Forget Facebook. 80 million of you are addicted to Zygna’s Facebook game, FarmVille.
6. It takes 2 seconds to “join” a new site through Facebook Connect. It can take a good 10 minutes doing it the old way.
7. How will you hear about parties? How will you remember where and when those parties are? Evite?
8. You don’t care about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg’s sometimes sketchy past.
9. Sure, Facebook has privacy issues, but you don’t care about privacy anymore. Remember when you wouldn’t use your real name on the Internet?
10. You’ve never quit before. Remember News Feed? Beacon? You didn’t quit then and won’t now, either. Not even if you want to.

You may balk at some of the above suggestions, though I’m pretty sure you won’t say you disagree with all of them. On the chance that you do, and you decide, screw this, I’m going to leave Facebook just in spite, know this: Facebook doesn’t like to be dumped, as a matter of fact, they are kind of Super Ex-girlfriend psycho about it. Read this article describing what happens when you deactivate your Facebook Account.

Oh, and by the way, deactivating your account is not the same thing as deleting it. Your information is still on the site, all you have to do is simply login and it is like you never even left. They don’t make that very clear, and I don’t think many people even realize this fact. If you have decided you really do want to delete your account, use this link to do so, not the “deactivate” link provided by Facebook. Note: even when deleting your account, Facebook, to further portray it’s elitist attitude, tells you that your account will not be completely deleted for 14 days, basically saying, “we know you don’t really want to delete your account, you’ll be back.”

Zuckerberg thinks you’re a moron, and he’s probably right

Ironically, a private IM conversation between a friend and Zuckerberg reveals Zuckerberg’s mentality about the users of Facebook. The naivity of people online is the reason Facebook continues to swell. People simply do not know that they are revealing their information to the world. Take the following story:

I have a close friend who just bought a house. Before he bought the house, he decided to research the seller. He had never met the seller, and all he had to go on was a name. Using that name, he was able to find the seller’s wife’s Facebook profile, which was publicly displaying multiple details regarding their lifestyle and the luxuries they maintained.

Now, my friend is a decent person, and would never use his advanced computing skills (he’s a very talented programmer, with his name on a few software patents) for evil, but he was able to learn more than enough about the person he was buying his house from to feel comfortable with the transaction.

At the closing, my friend did the good deed of informing the seller that he was able to find out many details of his life through his wife’s Facebook profile. Noticeably shocked at the information my friend had about him, the seller was a little more than annoyed that my friend knew so much about him.

People demand privacy, but they don’t even know when their privacy is being violated it. They are oblivious to how openly revealing they are through their own actions. No one really reads privacy policies (Facebook’s is now longer than the United States Constitution). And who would want to? We just want to get online, share some pictures, write some witty ’status’ updates and stay as permanently connected to our friends, loved ones, and complete strangers as possible.

Marketing is the root of Facebook’s evil

Companies are realizing the massive marketing potential that Facebook provides (which is, of course, where all of this really stems from). They are increasingly gaining insight on how using Facebook for business and marketing is a low-cost, and in most cases, incredibly effective tool.

But, and this is important, we saw this happen with MySpace. Companies were using MySpace URLs in their advertising instead of their own websites. The same thing is happening with Facebook. The difference? Facebook has provided businesses with a platform for interactivity – something MySpace didn’t really ever figure out.

Something will change. The question is what/who?

Facebook has very publicly called an “all hands on deck” meeting to discuss the recent backlash to their privacy policy changes. I doubt anything is really going to change, however. The vast majority of people are not even aware of the fact that Facebook has changed their privacy policies, much less how the changes really affect them, personally.

Some users have organized a “Quit Facebook Day” for May 31, 2010 in an attempt to both educate people about the negative privacy policies Facebook has implemented, as well as to encourage people to boycott the service.

Where do you stand?

Will you keep your Facebook profile? Will you make adjustments to your privacy settings? Will you remove your account all together?

Do you believe that you have a right to privacy when using a free service online? Do you believe those that reveal too much personal information on social networks are the ones that should be blamed for their own information being put out there? Tell me what you think in the comments.

Noise. With all of the outlets and inlets that the Internet provides, we experience more noise than we ever have in the past. Learning how to successfully wade through the noise and get to the good, quality content is an art in and of itself.

Regardless of the channel, there is noise to be found. Conduct a search on Google, and you’re likely to find ads and organic listings that flat-out don’t make sense to your search (noise); jump on Twitter for a few minutes and you’ll likely read tweets about people’s pets or dietary decisions for the day (noise); or, as in my latest recognition of noise that I personally deal with, launch Google Reader to catch up on what everyone you like to read is talking about and you’ll probably have some articles/posts that you really don’t care about and probably never will; or if you subscribe to multiple feeds from similar sources (like the New York Times technology section and Mashable) you’re likely to read about the same story/event 2-4 times in one sitting.

Chris Brogan, in this post about Attention as a Currency and Noise (worth a quick read) promotes the common-sense idea of budgeting attention/time for yourself. Though the idea is a common-sense one, Chris, as he often does, explains it in such a way that makes it easy to apply.

Budgeting, whether financial budgeting or attention budgeting often requires two major steps:

1. Determine what things you can’t live without. Financial budgets will usually include such things as a mortgage/rent, insurance, etc. Attention budgets will usually include such things as your boss or clients, your family members, etc. Essentially, you will be required to keeps these things in your budget on some level.
2. Determine what things you can easily get rid of. Don’t be a hoarder. Sometimes it makes better sense to simply cut something from the budget altogether rather than trying to find a way to keep paying for it. A great example of this for a financial budget would be to cut the having a latte at Starbucks every day. For attention budgets, you might simply unsubscribe to the feeds that you don’t get at least 80% value from as you read through them. By simply unsubscribing from the feeds that don’t provide you with a sufficient level of value, you are able to immediately reduce your attention spending level.

Of course the only way to truly reduce your spending is to stay committed to doing so, before you follow that person on Twitter or subscribe to that RSS feed, read through what they are saying/have said in the past and make sure it is in line with the type of information you believe you would like to spend your attention on in the future.

On the flip-side of this whole thing, it is important to realize that as people increasingly gain access to information and data, they will increasingly become more selective about what they choose to spend their attention budgets on. If you want to gain or maintain a percentage of that attention budget, you must make sure to deliver value and quality content/products/services, etc that keeps them interested and coming back for more.

And to borrow a Chris Brogan line, what say you?

For the past couple of days, there has been lots of buzz around Google’s latest attempt at social media. There have been countless reactions to the new product, from glowing praise to raving anger.

Google has dipped it’s toes in social media before, and has in most cases, completely missed the mark. Google Buzz, however, some felt, had/has promise. At the very least, it has been regarded as Google’s best attempt at social media to date. While this may be true, I think Google is being awfully Microsoft-esque about it.

There were numerous headlines on blogs and news sites that made claims similar to “Google Buzz: Twitter and Facebook Killer.” This couldn’t be further from the truth.

There are three major flaws to Google Buzz, right out of the gate:

1. You have to be a Gmail user. Lame. Admittedly, I’m a Gmail user, but – and this is a big but – I do not give it out freely and I certainly don’t want to just so I can use this service. I’m convinced I’m not the only one that feels this way. One of the greatest things about Twitter, Facebook, and even LinkedIn is that they have established their network around the concept of a profile instead of an email address.
2. Google has completely disregarded people’s desire for privacy by making you follow all of your Gmail contacts automatically as soon as you sign up for the service. On top of the fact that you may not want to follow all of these people right out of the gate, Google ruins it even more by displaying the people you follow on your public profile without so much as a mention that they are going to do so. For more on this read this great article by Business Insider: WARNING: Google Buzz Has A Huge Privacy Flaw
3. Google is exposing your home address. And you probably didn’t even know it. Sure, when you’re on your iPhone or other smartphone and you’re playing with Google Buzz it asks you if you are okay with letting Google Buzz use your current location; but I don’t think most people realize that Google is going to take that location and turn it into an address. I know I didn’t really think of it that way at first; my initial thought was that it would just be a general proximity, whoops. I looked at all the buzz activity that was near me and discovered that I could stalked by just about anyone who wanted to, if they were so inclined and I decided to actually use Google Buzz. That’s just creepy. No thanks.

Definitely not a Twitter/Facebook killer if you ask me. People already fear Google’s overwhelming ability to invade people’s privacy. With Google Buzz and the unfortunate methods by which Google has released it without being more proactive about protecting people’s privacy, I believe Google has yet again proven that it doesn’t know what the heck it’s doing when it comes to social media. Even Yahoo! got the chance to punch the big kid in the nose, stating on Twitter: “Two years after #Yahoo! launched #Buzz, Google follows suit. Check out the original: http://buzz.yahoo.com/”

This is a situation where Google should learn from it’s “evil-doing” nemesis Microsoft, and listen to Business Insider when they say, “Enough, Google — Just Buy Twitter Already.” Microsoft owns a portion of Facebook - smart, especially considering Facebook is giving even Google a run for it’s money when it comes to daily traffic. If Google really wants to stir up the social media world, they’d invest in a platform that has proven successful already – Twitter.

People Don’t Want or Need Another Social Network

I don’t have the slightest clue how many social networks have been started and/or failed in the last 10 years – and I’m not interested in taking any time to do any research on the matter, either. I do know this, though, of all the networks out there, only three really seem to have been successful enough to find their way into smaller communities like Lubbock.

See, in Lubbock, I am given a front-seat view of which trends will stick around and which will die. I consider the local adoption of new technology a good way to read the pulse of the long-term potential of a new thing. Sure, the Texas Tech students jump on the bandwagon early with a lot of things. But the business owners, working professionals, and the stay-at-home parents are usually very late to the party. Twitter has already passed the peak of media promotion, and yet, there are still numerous people in Lubbock that don’t even know how it works or what it’s all about. They’ve heard of it. They’re learning about it, and they are joining the party, but we are well past the curve compared to bigger metropolitan areas. The same goes for LinkedIn. Facebook caught on quite early though.

When I talk to my clients about social media, I can mention companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter (and in that order) and generally get at least an acknowledgement of having heard the names. If I mention Google Buzz, I suspect I won’t find anyone that has even heard of it for at least the next 3 months (unless they are friend or in the industry). To me, that is the measure of a social media success – how fast the normally late-adopters join the party.

People are already worn out by the existing social networks. Google has arrived late to the party, and not in the “guy that shows up just in time to get ready for the after-party” kind of way either. Google has arrived when all the cool kids have already left for the after-party and now they look like a big dork.

Overall, my prediction for Google Buzz: yet another Google social media fail. Unless, of course, they make some drastic changes and/or I’ve completely missed something. What are your thoughts? Have you messed with Google Buzz yet? Do you think it will kill Twitter/Facebook?

Twitter has exploded past the mainstream growth curve and is finding its way into marketing programs that are run by people with little to no experience using social media as a community building tool with a marketing mindset.

When rookies join Twitter on behalf of the companies or programs they work for, veterans can sniff them out in a split-second. And when this happens, your chances of Twitter promotional success are destined for failure. Want to make sure your prospective customers follow you instead of shaking their heads in disgust and moving on? Be sure NOT to do any of the following:

• Use a default avatar. This is by far one of the fastest ways to be ignored on Twitter, even by not-so-veteran users. It shows that you’re lazy, uncreative, and probably not in the right mindset for the Twitter community. It’s obvious all you care about is spamming people with your promotion.
• Use a default background. Okay, this one is not quite as bad as using a default avatar, but not by much. It still shows that you’re lazy and uncreative.
• Use the wrong background. Perhaps worse than using a default background is using one that associates your program with the wrong message. For example, don’t make the same mistake of one local branch’s Twitter account for a coupon program of using a picture of a local Mormon church as their background. Especially don’t use a picture of something when you don’t even know what it is a picture of (which is what this group did). A coupon program and a Mormon church don’t go together, unless the program is going to be funding the church in some way through proceeds.
• Follow 5x to 20x more people than are following you. When you follow a ton of people, and they don’t follow you back, even more people are not going to follow you back. It’s obvious to veterans and non-veterans alike that you don’t know what you’re doing, and you’re on Twitter for the wrong reasons. If your following count is 653 and your followers count is 54, you’ve got it wrong.
• Retweet people and promote yourself in the same tweet. Retweeting is commonly considered a large compliment in the Twitterverse. But when used incorrectly, it’s annoying to veterans and non-veterans alike. People care about retweets when they useful messages, not you taking an opportunity to promote yourself because someone happened to mention something related to your program.
• Not engage in actual conversation with other people on Twitter. Twitter is a social community, not a place for you to blast your marketing messages at people. Just because you happen to retweet someone, also, does not mean you are having conversation with them. Using an @ reply to send someone a marketing message also does not qualify as a conversation either.
• Only post a few posts to Twitter. This is almost always followed by spam-following 500 people, furthering the frustration on the part of those being followed. People enjoy being followed, but not amateurs, they want to be followed by people that they can connect with.

Don’t be an amateur

Before you jump on Twitter and make it painfully obvious that you don’t know what you’re doing, read some of these great articles on how to use Twitter for marketing effectively. They are written by people that have proven track records in the social network, and should be listened to.

Chris Brogan

• How to Manage Twitter
• Get More Twitter Followers TODAY
• How I Tweet – A FAQ

MarketingProfs

• Making Twitter Success Measurable
• The Dark Side of Twitter: What Businesses Need to Know
• Social Media 101: Use Twitter To Attract Prospects and Engage Customers

Mashable.com

• The Twitter Guide Book
• FOLLOW FAIL: The Top 10 Reasons I Will Not Follow You in Return on Twitter
• Twitter Marketing: Free Downloads for Your Tweets
• 40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them
• Twitter Promotion Done Right: #moonfruit

Chris Brogan is a highly respected social media veteran; he has posted a great video of a discussion about social media between himself and Joe Sorge, who runs AJ Bomers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and a few other restaurants in town.

Original post by Chris Brogan here
Direct link to the video here

Restaurants, Bars and Social Media – A Match Made in Heaven

Built by Twitter

Joe Sorge, in the video, matter-of-factly proclaims, “AJ Bombers was built by Twitter.” He explains that AJ Bombers and some of the other restaurants and bars he runs owe most if not all of their success to the power of Twitter. He uses Twitter to promote specials, and to promote his other restaurants for those people that may not want to come out to AJ Bombers that night.

Social Media Promotion Ideas

• First, make sure you include your Twitter address everywhere your name appears: menus, blackboards, websites (where you have a link to your Twitter and Facebook pages), Facebook pages (and you should put a link to your Facebook page on your Twitter page), put it everywhere.
• Offer a prize for people who follow you. For example: “Follow us by 5pm cst to be entered to win a free dinner for two on us!”
• Promote a Twitter-only special.
• Promote a Facebook-only special.
• Ask followers for feedback on something specific. You could ask them if they liked the new menu items, or if they would like to see a particular band come and play.
• Promote a happy-hour event, a new or returning band. The key here is to make these different each time. If you promote the same thing every day, people will tune you out.
• “Twitter Tuesday” is an easy to remember slogan that can be very powerful to use
• Use your businesses name as a #hashtag and encourage everyone to use it. Put a monitor up on the wall in your location and stream mentions of your businesses so that everyone in the place can keep up while they are there.

Your Own Social Media Community

A really cool way to encourage a community following via Twitter for AJ Bombers was to let people put “Twitter graffiti” on the walls and tables of the bar. People wrote their Twitter names and all sorts of self-promotion, names like @ironcupcakemike and @jungbow are all over the walls at AJ Bombers further engraving the concept of the tight-knit community of people that have been or regularly go to AJ Bombers.

If you aren’t comfortable letting people write on your walls, find some other way to encourage your patrons to connect with each other outside of your location. A great way to do this is to come up with interesting to-dos on Foursquare – a new social media tool designed specifically for the purpose of connecting with other people in the same geographic area. Come up with Foursquare Mayor Specials and promote them on Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare.

Interact, Involve, Improve

The critical factor to successfully building a social media community is to make sure you reach out to your customers. Ask them questions. Thank them when they mention your business. Give them helpful suggestions. And even more importantly, listen to what they are saying. Involve them in your future planning; what items should you put on your menu, what specials they would like to see, etc. Improve you business by interacting with your community, involving them in the future success of your business.

Not Just Food Service

Retailers, hair and nail salons, department stores, grocery stores, even specialty designers can take advantage of forming an online community using social media tools. Take this example of Rebecca Minkoff, a designer and founder of Rebecca Minkoff handbags. She posted this message to Twitter:

And 3 minutes later she posted this message to Twitter:

Considering the fact that most of her items sell between the $300 and $500 price, she was able to produce at least $750 in sales (minimum) in a span of 3 minutes. That’s the power of Twitter and social networks.

What About You? How Are You Building Your Online Community?

Have some other creative ways you’ve seen Twitter/Facebook used to generate business through the use of a community? Add to the conversation in the comments below.

A good friend of mine who also happens to be an up-and-coming MMA insider, has recently started actively using Twitter – partly, I claim, because of my constant prodding. He brought up an interesting point today: should you use “teaser” tweets to get people interested in something you are working on? Or are teaser tweets simply an annoyance in the already clogged data stream that is Twitter?

Personally, I don’t like teaser tweets, simply because I value my time dearly. I want to read what the people I follow on Twitter have to say – if I didn’t, I wouldn’t follow them, but I don’t enjoy reading messages that don’t carry much meaning, which, in my opinion is typically where teaser tweets get categorized.

I am an instant gratification type of person – if I don’t get it right now, I probably won’t get it. My wife accuses me of this all the time – I’m impulsive, I’ll admit it. I’m impulsive in both directions, though. If I want something bad enough, I get it right then. However, on the opposite hand, if I don’t get something right then, I tend to believe “it wasn’t meant to be,” and/or “I obviously don’t want it bad enough to actually get it,” so I typically let that thing fall off of my radar – at least for a while.

This is particularly true for information/news/blog posts. If it isn’t available right now, I am not (typically) going to go to the effort to setup a reminder for myself to catch it when it becomes available later.

That’s me, though. What do you think? Are teaser tweets a good idea, or a bad one? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

You wouldn’t go to a party with duct tape on your mouth, so why would you make your Twitter account private?

Twitter is a social media network. Granted, social can mean a private social club, but that isn’t what Twitter is all about. Twitter is about connecting with the world, whether that’s people in your local neighborhood, or people across the planet.

It’s about being approachable, not snobbish

That’s right, I said snobbish. I think people that have private Twitter accounts are snobs. They think that the conversations they have with their “friends” on Twitter are too exclusive to share with the world.

If you’re on Twitter, you’re theoretically there to take part in the community Twitter has created. The concept of sharing information, resources, and bits of life is the foundation of Twitter’s success. If everyone suddenly decided to make their accounts private, the success of Twitter would come to a screeching halt.

For work groups, private accounts do make sense

Okay, so there is one good reason I can come up with for people to have a private Twitter account – if they are using Twitter to communicate within a work group. If your private account falls into this category, then apologies for calling you a snob.

If your organization is using Twitter in a work group, I would actually be intrigued to see what impact it is having on productivity. Is it helping with productivity, or is it hurting? Do your employees like using it, or do they simply revert back to traditional “get up and go talk to the person” actions?

What do you think?

Do you use Twitter with a private account? If so, tell me why, maybe I’m completely off-base with this snob-thing. Do you agree with me? Do you think people with private Twitter accounts come off as snobbish? Let me know in the comments below.

Social media is quickly moving beyond the realm of “buzz” and is being recognized as a marketing landscape game-changer. Twitter has exploded, and Facebook had more traffic on Christmas day 2009 than Google did. To survive in this new marketing world, you better know how to navigate it’s waters.

The Power of Twitter

Twitter has become a powerful medium through which people all over the world are connecting to each other for a multitude of reasons. It has become the pulse of the online community – and indirectly the offline community. People are using Twitter as their up-to-the minute news source; getting all of their information about current events in a real-time stream of data that keeps them so informed that the only ones that know more than them are the ones reporting the news from the trenches. It is used as a stock-ticker, with people following financial institutions the provide real-time tweets about specific stocks. It is used in countless other ways.

Why Care?

With over 18 million adults in the US alone who access Twitter on any platform (web, desktop app, iPhone app, Blackberry, etc) on at least a monthly basis in 2009 – and a predicted 26 million by year-end 2010 – the numbers alone should be enough to care. But beyond the numbers is the powerful grassroots environment that give Twitter is foundational strength. By merging the best form of marketing a company could ask for (word-of-mouth) with a streamlined online resource (Twitter), companies that choose to ignore the social media up-and-comer will in the end be ignored themselves by the market.

By listening to what people are saying about you and/or your organization on Twitter you position yourself to learn from their criticisms and raves to improve your message, position, brand, etc. When you proactively engage your customers and prospects as they raise questions regarding you and/or your organization, they realize that you have enough interest in their concerns to listen to them and sometimes, that in and of itself is enough to turn a negative customer into a raving fan.

Find Out What People Are Saying

Twitter offers an incredibly powerful resource in it’s built-in, real-time search engine (http://search.twitter.com). Perhaps said best by Twitter itself:

Every public update sent to Twitter from anywhere in the world 24/7 can be instantly indexed and made discoverable via our newly launched real-time search. What was that loud noise outside your apartment? Did you just feel an earthquake? What do people think about your company, your product, or your city? With this newly launched feature, Twitter has become something unexpectedly important—a discovery engine for finding out what is happening right now.

Join The Conversation

People are probably talking about your organization/business, and if they’re not, they are talking about your competition, or they are undoubtedly talking about your industry. Listen to the pulse of those that are broadcasting their voice about you, your competition, your industry. Proactively engage the discussion participates, and learn how best to serve your market. Offer discounts via Direct Messages to people that have expressed positive comments on Twitter. Offer to do whatever is necessary to make right a wronged customer – again via Direct Message. Don’t directly engage specific customers via the public timeline as it may come of as self-serving, send them private, direct messages instead.

Have Class. Don’t Say Things You’ll Regret

When you speak, make sure you do what you can not to offend. Here are some resources for Twitter etiquette:

• A Brief and Informal Twitter Etiquette Guide – Chris Brogan
• Twitter Etiquette: Five Dos and Don’ts – CIO Magazine
• 10 Twitter Etiquette Rules – Norman Birnbach

Anyone even remotely interested in the marketing industry looks forward to the year’s pinnacle of advertising achievement. A large percentage of people (not necessarily people in marketing) that tuned in to this year admitted the only reason for doing so was in anticipation of being entertained, not by the players exerting themselves in the ultimate battle for American Football supremacy, rather by the 15 to 30 to 60 second sales pitches disguised as “clever” advertising.

2009 provided diminutive reactions amongst party-goers, with most elicited reactions coming from the ads that had a strong base in foundational humor. According to ADBOWL 2009, the Bridgestone “Potato Heads” ad won this year, undoubtedly because of the instant connection it made with everyone that has ever been in a long-term relationship. But did the ad really make you want to buy tires? Do you think you’ll remember the name “Bridgestone” when you are making a $500 purchase on those new treads? If so, then great, applaud Bridgestone on its effectiveness with you.

However, in this recessive economy companies cannot afford to spend $100,000 per second of air time (and don’t forget about the added cost of production expenses and royalties) and not be certain that investment is going to generate a profitable return. Though “branding campaigns” have proven themselves effective in the past, it should be noted that they were rooted in long-term spending to continually capture the desired market. The success of past branding campaigns have proven that a company cannot effectively create top-of-mind awareness by simply running a cool commercial that makes people laugh during one Super Bowl.

Bridgestone should have overcome this shortfall by providing their audience with a means to continue the already enjoyable experience provided by an amusing commercial. They should have built a website that commanded an ongoing audience, educating its customer while it provided an interactive experience that guaranteed Bridgestone’s brand top-of-mind awareness when that customer went to their neighborhood tire store to invest in their safety while driving.

This interactive experience, though, brings up another point. Vizio’s ad was nothing special, they undoubtedly didn’t spend millions of dollars on production, and they stayed true to the always successful marketing tactic of giving something away for free. They even provided for the interactive experience by encouraging the viewing audience to visit their website: vizio.com. Everything seemed to be going in the direction of a well-played, intelligent marketing approach that could have directly trackable responses; until you visited the site only to find that you couldn’t get to it because they (more specifically, their IT personnel) failed to appropriately load-test their web infrastructure. Let this be a lesson to the inexperienced: before you spend millions of dollars on a TV ad that is going to be broadcast to millions (or even thousands for that matter) of viewers, test, test, test your systems to ensure they can handle the load.

Another crowd-pleaser was Career Builder’s “repetition” ad as it reminded millions of workers of the many annoyances of doing the same thing day-in and day-out over and over and over and over. From a marketing standpoint, this is quite the home run. Everyone that is asked that watched the full Super Bowl remembers this specific ad, and the vast majority of them remember who the ad was for (among those that didn’t, most were able to make a guess that it was one of the big employment sites). Though they all found it incredibly annoying, they were able to relate to its meaning and therefore connected with the message that Career Builder was conveying. Extra marks for actually including a call-to-action by stating the obvious point that if you have a job you hate, then it’s time to look on CareerBuilder.com for a new one.

Other obvious notables are the first Bud Light commercial (meeting attendee makes bad suggestion and is hurtled out of the 5th story office), the Hulu commercial (glorifying the “brain-mushing” effects of watching too much TV), the Coke “heist,” the Coke Zero “re-make,” and Monster’s Moose’s rear (which generated this response from a Twitter follower: “better to have a moose’s a** in your face than be unemployed”).

With our economy in the shape it is in, consumers and businesses alike will all be thinking more and more with their wallet than with their impulses. Marketer’s need to realize this early and adjust their efforts accordingly, increasing their focus on marketing that generates the one thing that will help everyone in this economy: sales. Marketing without sales is synonymous with taking a flame to a pile of cash (think of the Joker in The Dark Knight), it’s just wasteful.