Episode 6: Twitter: One Big Social Block Party

I resumed our series about brands and consumers in the digital world this week with Howard Greenstein, a fellow Social Media Club organizer and Principal at the Harbrooke Group.  Howard and I met recently at the 140 Characters Conference hosted by Jeff Pulver in New York City, where we came to hear stories and learnings from Twitter Characters from all over the world.  In addition to being a participant, Howard was also one of the featured Characters and gave an excellent presentation on the “Wisdom of Twitter”. 

The first part of our discussion explored the culture of Twitter and it’s uniqueness from other social media computing platforms.  The sea of conversation threads, life streaming vignettes and advocacy discussions easily thrusts users into one of the biggest social block parties on the web.  It’s vital to mingle, seek out and find the right corner of the party where people are talking about the topics you care most about.  If you are trying to create and pull people into a specific dialog, then messages must be succinct and serve up the essence of your cause with the widest appeal.  Within the Twitter community, people with a huge desire to support causes and help others take action are rapidly connecting and engaging with others.

Turning the discussion towards marketing and communications, Howard and I examined a number of examples of popular brands using the tool to effectively engage with their customers. When I asked Howard what made these brands successful within the Twitter community, he emphasized the following:

• Being human (or true to character ala Ms Green M&M)
• Engaging in real dialog with their customers as much as they can
• Making their customers happy through the Twitter exchange (or directing them to the most appropriate channel to do so)

Our conversation also touched on the interchange between Facebook and Twitter and the tools brands can use to manage them more seamlessly.  The time flew by so quickly that we were unable to cover all of the questions, so there will be a Part 2 of this discussion on a future episode.

You can listen to the full podcast episode here. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/MichelleBatten_iMediaWorks

The series will continue next week with my guest, Steen Anderson from Fifth Finger to discuss, “Episode 6: Mobile: The Next Digital Frontier” – we’ll be on live at 4pm (EDT).

Comments

[Karen]

Love the J Crew MIA article. Although I am personally against Twitter, I believe it is a tremendous marketing and trust-building mechanism.