If Twitter consisted of 100 people

I recently saw this post and graphics on Mashable: If Twitter consisted of 100 people.

The fantastic research and graphics are from the Information is Beautiful blog.

If this is applied to your Twitter followers, what's the true percentage of your target audience that wants to hear from you and engage with you? It's likely a small percentage of your overall followers, as many people are only following your account in the hope that you'll follow them back so they can broadcast to you. It can feel like everyone has a megaphone and no one is listening.

That being said, it is possible to reach your target audience via Twitter and engage with them for mutual benefit. I suggest using HootSuite to find your audience by the subjects they are likely to be discussing and politely adding to the conversation and following those people.

Place your emphasis on quality, not quantity. There are Twitter users who have upwards of 100,000 followers, but they are all talk, all the time and people are most likely ignoring them. I'd bet there are other Twitter users with 100 followers who are actually getting more results from their efforts because they placed their focus on quality.

Mobile Internet access to eclipse desktop access by 2013

Here's a graphic that shows that more people will be access the Internet on mobile devices than on desktop/laptop computers by sometime in 2013. Thanks to the folks at the Hubspot blog for this.

So, have you started thinking about mobile in your branding strategy yet?

How mobile phones are changing social media

This very interesting social media graphic was placed on the HubSpot blog. Very interesting to see that mobile social media users are more sociable...my wife often tells me I'm being anti-social when on my iPhone.

Successfully changing perceptions of the Old Spice brand

If I asked you a year ago what came to mind when I said "Old Spice", what would you say? For me, it would be a reminder of my grandfather, a coal miner - a "manly man" - who would put on Old Spice aftershave when he cleaned up after a hard day at work. The brand was very effective during his generation; however, over time, the brand began to shift from being associated with manly men to being associated with old men.

Old Spice and its agency, Wieden + Kennedy, were faced with the challenge of shifting that perception for a new generation of customers. They developed a brilliant branding strategy that utilized actor Isaiah Mustapha speaking to women as "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like". Very clever commercials grabbed attention and began to reclaim the Old Spice brand's position as being associated with today's manly man. They are very effective, but they didn't stop there.

Next, they developed a hilarious social media campaign with great viral appeal that further advanced the brand strategy. They actively used Facebook and Twitter to engage with potential customers and produced a series of YouTube videos, like the one below, in response to questions or comments received through those social media channels. Some responses were to celebrities like Alyssa Milano, Christina Applegate or Ellen DeGeneres, but many were to regular folks.



The results? As I write, they have built a social network of over 61,000 followers on Twitter and over 589,000 fans on Facebook. Plus, their YouTube videos have had millions of views. We don't know the sales impact yet, but they've definitely had success in re-shaping the brand perception of Old Spice. And many men and women will be thinking of Old Spice when they buy men's personal products. Well done!

The right social media channels for your business

"We need to set up a Twitter account and a Facebook page for our business."

Really? Why Twitter and Facebook? What are you trying to accomplish? We are hearing comments like this more and more from our clients, so we thought we'd share some guidance on the topic.

What social media channels should you use for your business?

The answer has two parts:

A. The one your customers and potential customers are using (with a proviso that they are open to talk business on that channel), and

B. The one that you can commit to using consistently to provide value to your customers and potential customers to increase the likelihood that they'll bring their business to you.

If you're in the B2B arena, it's less likely that you'll need Facebook, but should be considering LinkedIn and blogging. If you're in B2C, you could likely benefit greatly from Facebook and possibly MySpace. These are general statements and each business will be different, but make sure the social media channel meets both of the criteria outlined above.

In our business, we use a blog, email newsletter, LinkedIn and Twitter. (We have a Facebook page, but more for search engine optimization purposes than social networking - our clients may be on Facebook, but not for talking business). The email newsletter (using content from the blog) has actually been the most effective for business development, but all four channels are set up as integrated components of our branding strategy.

For some additional guidance on using social media to build your brand, check out this past blog post.

[Note: Cartoon image source: blog.hubspot.com]

G20 Protests: completely ineffective for communicating a message

Thousands of people, many of them good intentioned people seeking to peacefully get their message across, marched in Toronto during the G20 Summit this past weekend. What was the cause that mobilized so many people? I have no idea...and few people do. The protests were completely ineffective for getting their message out.

Some of the protesters have complained that the media only places focus on the violent acts, which always seem to accompany gatherings of world leaders. But this is a lame argument; the media will focus on whatever is going to catch the attention of their audience. Burning police cars and the masked, black-clothed anarchists are going to get the attention every time...they're remarkable, albeit in a bad way. The message was lost, and the protest organizers should have expected that based on past summits.

So how to get a legitimate protest message out? In the very same week as the G20, a group called Avaaz.org launched a very successful protest to defeat a proposal to legalize a commercial whale hunt at a gathering of the International Whaling Commission in Morocco. They used a graphic image (shown here) and an effective social media campaign to spread awareness of their cause internationally. At the vote date, they had an online petition of over 1 million names and created global outrage. And the proposal? Defeated.

Turning a negative into a double positive

Yesterday I was at a Starbucks in Halifax, ordered my venti skinny vanilla latte for the drive home to Cape Breton, and waited, and waited... After 5 or 6 people who ordered after me received their order, I asked if they had forgotten mine. They had. It was fine, I said, I was in no hurry. But after quickly rectifying the situation and giving me my order, the barrista handed me a certificate for a free coffee saying, "Sorry for your wait. Next time, it's on us."

It was a simple mistake and I was OK with them just rectifying the situation, but they went farther.

A couple years ago I heard a presentation by Pete Luckett of Pete's Frootique who said he loved it when a customer complained. Loved it?? Yes, he saw it as an opportunity to turn a negative into a double positive. Whenever his shop received a complaint, he would assemble a huge fruit basket and personally deliver it to the unhappy customer. He said this was an opportunity to show the customer that they were very important and their concerns had been listened to. And how many customers told people about Pete visiting them personally? I'd bet many.

You and the people who work with you are going to make mistakes and lapses in judgement from time to time, but it's how you rectify the situation that counts. Turn the negative into a double positive and your customers will remember that personal touch far more than the screw up.