My Take on Twitter Followers and Conversation

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The topic of Twitter followers has been a pretty hot one recently.  Not only have I spent lots of time talking about it with people at events but  some awesome posts have been written on the subject.  My buddy Jackson Wightman wrote a post recently on the topic which you can read on his blog.  Joe Thornley also wrote a great post on the subject as well, and the post and comments are worth a read.

As such, I figured it was about time that I put my hat into the ring and let my definitive thoughts be published on the matter.

I don't care about number of followers and I don't care if somebody follows me back or not.


I have heard about and seen a few dramatic flare-ups over people not following people recently and it makes me laugh because somebody doesn't need to follow you in order to see your activity.  Why?

1) You can be on somebody's list even if they don't follow you
I found this out when I tried to unfollow (and therefore not see anymore tweets) somebody I didn't want to see anymore.  You can get visibility by being on a list, and I would almost say that being on a list is more important than following because I don't see many people that use their home feed.

2) More and more, I hear more people using searches and following hashtags
Seems that Twitter2.0 is all about listening.  Power users are listening for topics and following conversations in the form of hastags more than watching home feeds or even lists at times so it comes back to the idea of participating in conversations and sharing information about topics.

Now do you agree that following isn't all that important?  It all comes back to the same thing: conversation and relevancy.   Broadcasting messages with crap that nobody cares about (meaning they don't have a search running for that topic) and you're not going to get seen.  Use hashtags and @replies and you'll also get seen.  Elementary my dear Watson.  But can you measure this?

I run some pretty quick stats and I have to tip my hat to Scott Stratten of "Unmarketing" fame for turning me onto this idea.  You see, I saw a video of Scott doing a keynote and he mentioned that when he starting using Twitter, he sat down and took about three months to interact with people on the platform.  In doing so, somewhere over 75% of what he did was talk to other people and share content.

I then went over TweetStats and TweetReach and ran some numbers.  Unfortunately, I don't have my own personal "before" numbers but here is a quick analysis and comparison.

My numbers: You can see that 35% of my tweets are @replies and about 19% are retweets.  That means I am talking directly to or sharing tweets/information 54% of the time.  So, over half of my activity is conversing with or engaging people.  Personally, I think this isn't that bad but I know I can do better and I am always trying.

Scotts's numbers:  I ran the same analysis on Scott's @unmarketing account and was blown away.  Amazingly, 76.35% of his activity is @replies and 4.81% is retweets.  Rounding it out, a full 81% of his Twitter activity is conversational.  Unbelievable!  Here's the proof, showing only that 76% monster number of @replies.  When people talk about managing social media using metrics, I'd say that metric is pretty darn important.  Wouldn't you?

Related articles

• UnMarketing by Scott Stratten (tjantunen.com)
• People Spread Awesome - Scott Stratten at #SMCV10 (techvibes.com)
• Ten Simple Ways to Get Your Tweets Retweeted (fathomseo.com)
• Transparency, Klout and Scott Stratten (marketingtechblog.com)
• 12 Reasons Why People Unfollow You on Twitter - Coz You're Sick ? (madrasgeek.com)
• The Rise of #Hashtags (nten.org)

Do Work

I like to think that we are heading into a Work2.0 era where simply showing up isn't good enough.  I'm not actually sure if it's Work2.0 or Work 3.0 yet but I'm sure that it is NOT Work1.0.

It used to be that having a job was good enough.  It used to be that doing something was good enough but I think that we are now in an era where people will differentiate themselves largely on their ability to do the right things at the right time with the right amount of effort.

This concept really hit home for me in 2010.  Largely because I started to see a shift from thinking about strategy to thinking about doing or to be more specific, a focus on doing.

Julien Smith recently launched a that urges you to get to work.

Seth Godin talks less about marketing these days and more about overcoming dips and being indispensable.  Heck, Godin even starting selling a journal that makes it easier to "ship".

In the past year, bloggers across the world have started blogging continuously in the form of lists posts.

In predicting a big 2011 for the concept of gettin' er done.  I'm sure David Allen would be pleased.

Book Review: Fascinate by Sally Hogshead

Cover via Amazon

Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation by Sally Hogshead is a book I have been waiting close to six months to read.  Took me longer than I had anticipated to get to it, but I'm glad that I finally did because this book is amazing and a must for any communicator or marketer.

There seems to be a trend in marketing thinking these days.  In order to really understand why we do things (like buy or hold onto an idea) we need to look to the "ologies".  Biology (or Buy-ology), sociology and anthropology are all being used to explain why we do seemingly irrational things.  In Linchpin, Seth Godin talks about the lizard brain and its power over our actions.  In Made to Switch, the Heath brothers talk about engaging the rider, directing the elephant and shaping the path... all of these are metaphors for parts of our brain.  In order to write Fascinate, Sally Hogshead must have poured over thousands of pages of research because much of book is based on scientific research about what fascinates us.

At the start of this book, we learn the golden hallmarks of a fascinating message:

1. Provokes a strong and immediate emotional reaction
2. Creates advocates
3. Becomes "cultural shorthand" for a specific set of actions of values
4. Incites conversation
5. Forces competitors to realign around it
6. Triggers social revolutions

 After this, we spend the rest of the book learning about the seven fascination triggers:

Lust
Mytique
Alarm
Prestige
Power
Vice
Trust

However, what I would say makes this book really stand out is the amazing three part ending on how to evaluate how fascinating your company or message is, how to create a fascinating message and then how to execute it.  This is the part of this book that sets it apart because it gives you specific exercises you can do in order to harness the power of fascination for your own endeavors.

Simply put this book is a must-read and one I will be adding to my own personal collection for sure.  If you'd like to get a taste for the material before reading it, you can listen to Mitch Joel's Six Pixels of Separation Podcast that has an interview with Sally Hogshead.  

Related articles

• Fascinate: 7 Triggers to Persuasion & Captivation (mpdailyfix.com)

Book Review: The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier

Cover of The Brand Gap: Expanded Edition

As mentioned in my previous post, I have a few books to read in the upcoming months. I just finished reading "The Brand Gap: A Whiteboard Overview" by Marty Neumeier.

Neumeier is a California-based brand collaboration expert. This means that he specializes in making sure marketing teams understand and communicate brand value consistently across all of their activities and customer touch points.

The Brand Gap is a quick read and designed to get you into the heart of branding really quickly.  Absent from this book is the long-winded prose you find in many marketing/branding books where the author goes on and on about one subject until you begin to fall asleep.  Neumeier keeps this book on-point and to the point.

Tip: The book contains a summary and suggested reading list at the end and both are awesome.

He starts by talking about what a brand is (a gut reaction) and what the brand gap is (between strategy and creativity).  Then he goes about explaining the five disciplines of creating a brand that is "charismatic", meaning a brand less prone to commoditization.   They are:

1. Differentiation
2. Collaboration
3. Innovation
4. Validation
5. Cultivation

I have to say that after reading this book, I realize that many of these concepts and many of the exercises in the book have been taught to me over the years.  Nevertheless, this book is so good and so easy to get through that I recommend it as essential reading for everyone who is even close to managing a brand.

Next up:  Fascinate by Sally Hogshead.  Been waiting 6 months to read this one! 

What I'm Reading

Cover via Amazon

Every few months I seem to go on a massive reading binge that is often the result of getting a bunch of books I have placed on hold at the library.

I am so blessed to live about two blocks from the Main branch here in Ottawa and I'd just like to take a second to say that the Ottawa Public Library rocks.  You can go online, find the book you want and place a hold on it.  It is then sent to the branch of your choosing.  You get an email when it's ready for pick up and all you have to do is drop in and check it out.  Bonus is that the Main branch has self serve checkout so it takes two second to pick up your book(s).  Libraries are great resources and they are free to use.  I do buy some books but I probably save myself hundreds of dollars each year by using the library.

Anyways, back to my post.

I recently finished reading Mitch Joel's book "Six Pixels of Separation".  It is a must-read for anyone looking to understand how the web has enabled us to be connected and includes lots of great actionable content that you can start applying right away.

One thing that is in the book that blew me away (and still is blowing me away days later) is the fact that bad reviews convert better than good ones.  Everyone I mention this to can't really believe it but when you listen to the reasoning and methodology, you see that it does make sense.  What is almost more interesting to me is the sense that marketers have been conditioned (and I don't know why or how this happened) to feel as though we need to shield our customers from negative reviews.  If you've ever wondered whether or not you should use data to make decisions (and test whenever possible) - there it is.    I'd like to run some test on a product page sometime.

I also have a few books waiting to be read as well.  One of them is Marty Neumeier's "The Brand Gap".   Which is, obviously, all about branding.  I have heard so many good things about this book and I started it just last night.

The other one is Sally Hogshead's "Fascinate" which is a book I have been waiting about six months to get.  I have heard interviews with Sally on podcasts so I have a pretty good idea of what the book is all about but I'm still looking forward to reading it.  Fascinate is all about teaching marketers 7 triggers for creating products and marketing messages that appeal to your audience.

The last one I have to pick up this afternoon, is Greg Verdino's "Micromarketing" which is all about social media marketing but more specifically, using small bits of content spread all over the place, in a unified manner, to get your message across.

I've got my work cut out for me in the next few weeks as these books are all due back by the end of the month.  Better get to it!

Related articles

• Fascinate: 7 Triggers to Persuasion & Captivation (mpdailyfix.com)

How to Avoid Gobbledygook

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If there is one thing that I despise more than cold soup, it is gobbledygook. (note: I can't believe that spellcheck picked that one up!)

Wikipedia defines gobbledygook as any text containing jargon or especially convoluted English that results in it being excessively hard to understand or even incomprehensible.

I like to call it "vapour text" because appears to look like something when in fact, it's nothing.  There are many reasons for gobbledygook, chief among them is that people, companies and industries love to speak in a language that they only they understand.  They use their own language as means of creating a group that they feel apart of and one that keeps other people out.

I see it everywhere.  Most often in marketing materials, website copy, datasheets, whitepapers.  You also hear it in speeches, conversations, lectures and webinars.  Sometimes they write or speak in a short of short-hand using acronyms that they think everyone understands, other times they speak in such long-winded sentences, you'd think they were going to pass out if they didn't stop for a breath.

My personal belief is that no one ever understands this stuff.  Even the people you think might understand it, don't.  I have often theorized to myself while reading this crap or hearing somebody speak "I bet if I stopped this and asked 10 people what X, Y, Z really mean, they wouldn't be able to tell me".

Whenever I have this conversation with people, there will always be somebody who says "but you have to be professional," or somebody else that says "that's how we do it politics," (some of the worst offenders) or "you have to match your audience,".   My answer for all of these tends to be "unless you're writing for the Journal of XYZ, your audience is going to be real people".

I believe that the need to speak in goobledygook is a complete myth.  I believe that the age of the internet and more specifically, search engines has really helped us change this.  Today, we can use web analytics and keyword research tools to see what people are really responding to instead of simply guessing.  We now have the ability to prove the people who continue to use goobledygook wrong.

With that in mind, here are a few tips for how you can bust the goobledygookers:

1) Use Google Trends to see what terms are more popular in Google searches.   Search data is awesome because it shows intent.  It shows what might be at the top of somebody's mind because I believe that people bring up Google and just type something in.  Next time some wanker is pushing you to use some ridiculous term in your copy, graph what you want to use versus what they want to use in Trends.

2) Ask.  I like to play dumb and ask somebody what something means.  If they stutter or have to think about it, I will suggest something simpler.

3) Run an A/B test.  Use a tool like Google Optimizer or something similar to set up an A/B test of simple copy versus complex copy.  Let the results speak for themselves.

4) Use "free writing" to develop copy.  If you find yourself struggling to get copy down then you're probably spending too much time trying to use terms that aren't natural.  One way to break out of this is to use "free writing" which a technique I have used for years without even knowing what it is.  In fact, it wasn't really until I heard this episode of Mitch Joel's podcast that I figured out what I was doing.

There is a trend, happening right now, towards the re-humanization of interaction.  After years of marketers speaking to themselves, the tide if beginning to turn.  We're beginning to interact like people again.  People who speak a normal language and not some long, drawn-out form of prose that only a true academic could love.

Try it and let me know how it works out for you.

UPDATE: The day after I published this post, I was pointed to this post by Suzanne Lowe about the lack of understanding by clients of firms that sell professional services.  Provides an additional viewpoint on what I am talking about here.  Also provides a handy glossary of terms.

Blog Action Day 2010: Water

Thanks to Tom Megginson, Creative Director at Ottawa's Acart Communications for pointing me to the fact that today is blog action day 2010.  The purpose is to unite bloggers worldwide for one day on a topic.  I believe this year is the third year of the initiative and this year it is about water.

It is understandable that Canadians don't really think about drinking water that often.  Estimates are that Canada has between 5% and 20% of the world's supply of clean drinking water at our disposal.  We are surrounded by it and we enjoy spending our time swimming in it instead of thinking about it.

The problem is that most of the world isn't as fortunate as us.  Many don't have the luxury to consume or even waste water like we do.  The CBC reported:

Canadians consume 350 litres of water a day per capita, second only to the Americans as the most profligate wasters of water in the world. The average global citizen needs only between 20 and 40 litres of water a day for drinking and sanitation.

Perhaps if Canadians understood the magnitude of the clean drinking water program globally, we'd start to change our habits in some small ways that could make a huge difference.  Here are some startling facts about the clean drinking water issue from charity:water :

• Over a billion people, or one in eight, don't have access to clean drinking water.
• In Africa alone, people spend nearly 40 billion hours every year walking for water that is often barely safe to drink.
• Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of diseases and kill more people every year than acts of violence, including war.

What can you do to help?

The Ottawa-based non-profit One Change has some great tips for saving water on their site.

Having recently read Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead and been to a Furthur show just this past summer, I'd like to take this opportunity to point to The Unbroken Chain Foundation's Box of Rain project that supports charity : water.

You can view their auction which includes items such as tickets to the Furthur New Year's celebration in San Francisco.

You can also sign change.org's petition.

Change.org|Start Petition

It's better to be part of the "in" crowd

Cover via Amazon

One of the biggest pieces of advice I always have for students as they enter the workforce is to do their best to spend as much time as they can around senior management.  Ideally, you will get to interact with your CEO or C-level executives and when you do, be very attentive to what they do and how they act because obviously, they are doing something right and there is always something you can learn from them.

I recently had the pleasure of sitting the CEO of a Canadian biotech company at an industry function.  Having not had much prior experience in biotech, it was great getting his perspective on the business.  I was also interested to hear about how he allocates his time and for companies in their earlier stages means lots of time spent searching for financing.  


His biggest piece of advice was that you have to work hard to be part of the "in" crowd.  


This advice is sure to draw many reactions from people and I'm sure some of them will be negative.  What is this, high school?  Who wants to be part of the "in" crowd anymore?  Who wants to be part of a crowd when you can be different?  I'm already part of the "in" crowd!

Personally, I was a little taken aback at this advice but then I started to think about what I have been reading in Seth Godin's book "The Dip".  To sum up what I have read so far: Anything worth doing is worth doing to be the best at because being the best has advantages that are exponentially greater than being second best, or worse.  To be the best at something means that you have to persevere through "The Dip" which is that long trough on the results/effort scale where you start to realize diminishing returns but this Dip is only temporary and happens after your initial success and before the remarkable long term success that comes with being the best at something.

Now that we have that out of the way, here's how I connected the two.  If everybody was part of the "in" crowd then it wouldn't exist because it would just be "the crowd" or more simply, everybody.  One of the most classic rules in business and one that is echoed in "The Dip" is that scarcity breeds value.  Therefore, there are advantages to being part of the "in" crowd and for people trying to come up in the world, whether it be to get a better job or grow their business, being part of the "in" crowd has many of the advantages that come with being the best at something.

For small companies, these advantages might mean an easier access to financing.  For young employees looking to move up in the world, it might mean faster promotions.  I'm sure that we all work with people that we feel spend more time schmoozing than working and while I think that is never a good situation, I think that you need to be actively working to make sure you're part of the "in" crowd at your workplace and your industry.

Let go of any negative associations you might have about the "in" crowd and embrace what membership might be able to do for your or your company.

Great advice indeed.

Something I never knew, and I bet you didn't either!

I recently picked up some contract work with BIOTECanada, an association that represents the biotechnology industry here in Canada.  There is lots to be done here and things are even busier now that National Biotechnology Week is starting up on September 17.

One of the most interesting things I have learned so far is that biotechnology is big business in Canada.  I should say that I always knew it wasn't small business... but I really had no clue until I started this position that in Canada, biotechnology is worth over $84 billion annually or 6.5% of our GDP.

However, I will have to say that I often find a number like that really doesn't have any meaning unless you put it in perspective.  So here it is: our bio-based economy is worth more than the automotive industry and is just about equal with oil and gas (according to 2008 numbers).  That's pretty impressive when you think about it.  In fact, I bet if you asked 100 people in the street to name our top industry sectors, biotech wouldn't be in the list and both oil and cars would be.

Perhaps even more impressive are some of Canada's accomplishments in the field of biotechnology.  Some of these I knew but most I have to admit I didn't:

1. In 1922, Banting and Best discover insulin.
2. In 1974, Stefansson and Downey developed an early form of canola (the first biotech crop)
3. In 2003, we were the first to sequence the SARS genome.  

The biotechnology industry industry sure has lots of challenges ahead of it.  For one, many foreign countries are pouring money into biotech as they see it as the way of the future.  The best course I took in my MBA program was on intellectual property and I know from that course that we need to ensure that we have both a well funded and well managed strategy for developing intellectual property.  Plus, there are many image issues that apply when talking about biotech and those will only intensify as more genetically modified products pass regulatory approval.

But the purpose of this post is more to share something I have learned about an industry that I think is really fascinating and dynamic.  It's also an industry that is more important to our daily lives than we care to think about.  I'm looking forward to learning more, that's for sure!

Why Taylor Swift and Her Team are Brilliant at PR

I read this story on Perez Hilton's site today about Taylor Swift doing a marathon 14 hour meet and greet with her fans.  I really think the video is something to be seen:



I couldn't help but think that this was an absolutely brilliant PR move.  Here's why:

1) I doesn't come off as a PR stunt:  Everyone is there to meet Taylor Swift and she is there to meet her fans but if you really think about it, it is a PR event.

2) It was interactive: More than just a star sitting at a table, she stood and talked to her fans and even more important, they got to talk to her.  They also got to see costumes and sets from her tour.

3) It was personal: she took the time to connect with everyone as best she could on a personal level.  She signed almost everything imaginable and seemed genuinely interested to be there.  It seems like she was supposed to only be there for 13 hours but at the end of the video she says she was actually there 14.5 hours.

4) Earned media: I am sure that fans are going to put pictures on Flickr, upload videos on Youtube, talk about it like crazy and share their experience anyway they can.  I'm sure the dollar value of that media would in the millions of dollars.

I have often said that companies should always keep their eyes and ears open to what they can learn from other people/companies/industries and I think this is an perfect example of something that could be used by even the smallest of companies.

It's about about being a real person, going the extra mile and giving people something that is interactive and unique.

Doesn't that sound like fun?