I have the pleasure of lending NateRiggs.com to Cheryl Harrison for this guest post.  Cheryl has over 10 years of experience using social media tools, going way back to the days of AIM chat rooms, LiveJournal and GeoCities.

Cheryl is an agency-reared marketer, a member of the Columbus Yelp Elite (where she has written over 2oo reviews of local hotspots).  She has been an active blogger at BeingCheryl.com since early 2008, and works as the Tactical Lead at Social Business Strategies.

Would you like to be a guest blogger on NateRiggs.com?  If so, go ahead and submit your post idea here.  I’ll be in touch.
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If you’re on Twitter, you’ve likely got an agenda.

“I want to sell more products or services.”

“I want to make people laugh.”

“I want to look smart.”

“I want to meet new people.”

While the motives are very different, accomplishing any of them requires some level of influence – people paying attention to what you’re saying.

Here are a few ways you can gauge your current Twitter influence:

1) Number of followers
Yeah, yeah, I know. This number can be spammed, scammed, faked and forged about a million different ways. However, this number still needs to be taken into consideration, because sheer reach does effect how influential your content can become (to some degree).

2) Number of lists
I give this Twitter metric a bit more weight, the reason being that you can safely assume that most of the people who have listed you are actually paying attention to you. Personally, I have 7 lists, 5 public and 2 private, all of which I am significantly more likely to check than the general stream of all tweets. In addition to analyzing the NUMBER of lists you are on, the name and description of the lists you are on can show you how your peers view you and for what you are influential.

3) Klout
Klout is a service that measures a Twitter profile’s influence, using an in-depth algorithm. Klout tells you what type of Twitter user you are (based on how often you share, have conversations, etc.), what users you influence the most (and who influences you), which topics you discuss most, how engaged your network is with you, how often your posts are retweeted, and a few other factors.

4) Tweet Level
Another service that analyzes a Twitter profile, Tweet Level gives users a numeric ranking to influence, popularity, engagement and trust (in addition to pretty good explanations of what the numbers mean). It also stacks you next to a few of your followers, both those ranking higher and lower than you, for comparison.

5) Tweet Stats
Tweet Stats allows you to view what day of the week and what time of the day you post the most often. What does that have to do with influence? Let’s say most of your posts occur early in the morning (EST). It’s safe to say that your influence in other time zones is virtually nonexistent. These are just numbers to give you a starting point from which to benchmark. A low score or list count does not necessarily mean you are not influential.

The best way to increase and maintain your influence on Twitter is to have real conversations with people and create value for them. Even if you only have 10 followers, be influential to those 10 people.

Who are some of the people you think are influential on Twitter?

If you have an Internet connection, you probably know what’s going on with the Old Spice Guy.  He’s everywhere.  And people are talking, laughing and sharing the videos at an incredible pace.  At the time of this post, Old Spice’s YouTube channel has recieved a total of 53,660,116 views, with a large majority happening in the last week.

It’s gone viral.  

It’s truly exciting to watch this unfold.  The campaign, created by marketing agency Wieden + Kennedy, and featuring actor and former pro football player Isaiah Mustafa, is one of the biggest creative breakthroughs since we saw the orginial iPhone shredded to bits on Blendtech’s Will It Blend.  

Read Write Web does a great job in this article of detailing how Wieden + Kennedy approached the project.  The agency deserves a cordial hat tip for taking risks and cutting a new path in online and viral marketing.  

Why It’s Brilliant

• Entertainment and the Weirdness Factor
  The content of these videos is just weird enough, but not creepy.  The writing pushes the envelope and really has nothing to do with the product, other than the occasional cameo shot.  It’s not selling anything.  The delivery of such absurd lines by Mustafa is reminiscent of the lists and t-shirts that float around emblazoned with popular Chuck Norris jokes.  The absurdity makes it highly entertaining, so I was hooked.  Much like a tweet, the brevity of the content makes it easy to consume.  I quickly got sucked down the rabbit hole and watched another video.  And another…
• Mass Media First
  Before any spread began via social media channels, Mustafa was syndicated on primetime television.  I first saw this video run sometime around 9:30 p.m. on Fox, during the American Idol spinoff, So You Think You Can Dance.  Why is that important?  Millions of viewers were introduced to the concept and Mustafa.  You should also note the difference in post-production and editing between this video and those regularly produced for social media distribution.
• Human Business Team
  For 48 hours, a team of 6 human beings manned the outposts and a production studio.  Listening stations were set up to respond to various tweets, status updates and conversations that were happening around the web about the campaign.  The @oldspice team, comprised of social media power users and technical specialists like producers, editors and even script writers used this information to tailor, produce and distribute over 200 entertaining videos of the spot.  Amazing.
• Getting Personal with Influencers
  Alyssa Milano and Perez Hilton probably don’t wear Old Spice, but they do have millions of followers on Twitter and other social networks.  Their sphere of influence and social graph makes them very attractive to B2C product companies, in terms of creating viral spread.  When influencers talk, their followers start talking too.  The critical success factor was how the Old Spice team reached out to the influencers, grabbing their attention with humor (and sometimes snarky comments) that started real conversations.
• Loosening the Reigns
  I have a new opinion of P&G and Old Spice, as they clearly did not take themselves too seriously.  To quote the RRW article: “Tait says that Old Spice’s parent company, Proctor & Gamble, exhibited incredible bravery in allowing his team to write marketing content in real time, with little to no supervision.  ’There is such great trust [between the companies],’ he said. ‘But we are being very responsible.  They have given us a set of guidelines and if we get close to the edges we contact them.”  I find that statement so refreshing.  So many times, companies continue to demand complete control over their message.  The problem is that complete control is no longer possible.  The world has changed, and cutting-edge agencies and consultants understand why.  We social media users know this because we are in the thick of it every day, working from the frontlines of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, because that’s where all the cool kids (like us, of course) hang out.  “P&G had enough trust in their agency and the relationship to let them play.  Today, that’s a critical ingredient of success.” 
• Speed and Real Time
  D.M. Scott’s new book is going to talk about the idea and power of real time.  If it’s up to par with everything else he writes, it will absolutely change the game.  I’m willing to bet that this campaign has already inked it’s spot as a case study in the pages of David’s work.  What’s most amazing to me (and so creative) is how the Old Spice team broke the rules of Twitter by responding to tweets with video messages that were incredibly outside of the 140-character limit.  Essentially, leveraging Twitter’s real-time communication, while bending content rules allowed for Old Spice to maintain Mustafa’s campaign branding, as a spokesperson, in a much more engaging way than a simple-text tweet.  Truly a stroke of genius.
• Shifting the Brand Perception
  I think it relates to Mustafa’s delivery and the comical writing for the video responses, but personally, I’ll never look at Old Spice the same way again.  Brand is about what consumers attribute to a product, service, company or human being.  My perception of Old Spice had always been that it was the cologne that we gave my grandfather on Christmas morning.  Even the name Old Spice creates a disconnect in reaching younger audiences.  Now, however, I see Old Spice as a brand that has has a Gen Y sense of humor, participates in the places I visit, and has a young and hip former NFL spokesperson.  When I pass an Old Spice display in the store, I suddenly find myself stopping to look and explore.
• Mustafa’s Back Story & Humanization
  Unlike Nationwide’s fictitious and lackluster attempt at the World’s Greatest Spokesperson In The World, Isaiah Mustafa is a real human being.  He’s a former NFL football player and avid reader of comic books, who studied history at Arizona State University and has a daughter (who he addresses from a tweet in this video).  Why is this important to the campaign?  It provides fodder for publicity to keep the story going.  Today, everyone on the web is in awe as to how this Old Spice brand revamp was executed.  ReadRightWeb wrote the first article outlining how they truly executed.  There will surely be more articles on the matter, and the press will likely want to know more about who Mustafa is.  To a nationally syndicated reporter or talk radio host, Mustafa is beginning to look like a great interview.

What’s your take?  Did I miss anything?  Do you agree?  Disagree?

I’m not a huge basketball fan, but I will say that Dan Gilbert has gusto.

He also seems to get how this social media stuff, and human business on the Interwebz, is working these days.

Some NBA critics are cringing at his Open Letter to Cavaliers Fans - claiming that it’s an emotionally-charged, knee-jerk reaction.  I, however, completely disagree.

To me, this open letter seems like a very calculated tactic that’s been extremely well executed, in terms of using social media to gain viral reach for the fans’ position.  It’s a rally cry.

Why?

• Placement of the letter as a redirect on the Cavs’ homepage leverages the natural query volume generated by LeBron’s television announcement.  High potential to go viral VERY quickly (which, it already has on Twitter - to the tune of about 30-40 mentions each refresh).
• Gilbert is talking directly to his paying audience: fans of the Cleveland Cavaliers (most of whom live in and around Ohio)
• It’s passionate as heck.  He’s leveraging what Chris and Julien call, “One of Us.”  The copy uses “we” and “our” all over the place.
• Gilbert is turning the folks who are upset about LeBron’s move into a motivated and technology-enabled tribe
• The choice of using Comic Sans as a web font is unique enough to spark up its own conversation
• Gilbert knew that this rebuttal would spread like wildfire

Basketball fan or not, what’s your take?

I’ve been a HootSuite user for some time now, and while I won’t be signing up for the HootSuite Certified Professionals program anytime soon, I’m digging the new release of HootSuite5.

I’ve been playing around since about 6 a.m. this morning when I received the notification of the update.  This post is purely an initial review of HootSuite5 and only my first reaction, as well as the reactions of some of my Twitter followers.  I’m pleased to feature some of their opinions.  Thanks for the insight, folks!

What’s Different about HootSuite5

You don’t have to write code to know that Google’s HTML5 is creating a ton of buzz across the web.  It seems like a good move that HootSuite has invested time and energy into building on the new web standard. Geo-search capabilities aside, I think the most promising ability that innovation offers is an improved ability to drag and drop various media objects, much like how Apple products work.  Improved refresh speed is a plus, as well.

Review of HootSuite 5 – My Initial Reactions

• Redesigned Interface – I like the aesthetics of the new release much better.  To be clear, I’m accessing HootSuite 5 from Google Chrome, so I’m not sure how it operates from other browsers.  Amanda L. Sage also seems to be a fan of the new design and themes and speed:
  
  

  Mike Bowers also has an interesting take on the new design:
  
  I agree with both points.  With Amanda, it is nice to have the ability to customize the look and feel of the dashboard.  I think that some aspects of the functionality are faster and some are still a bit clunky.  I’ll attribute that to the usual bugs that happen in early releases of a new version of software, coupled by exploration into HTML5.  From a product standpoint, HootSuite has always been good with releasing fixes fairly quickly.

• Site Analytics – It’s going to take me a few more days to wrap my head completely around where HootSuite5 is heading with these updated features.  I will say this, though: the addition of Google Analytics seems to be a win for me, simply from a convenience standpoint.  Integration was also a two-click breeze and the display dashboard is pleasing.  I’ve not yet played with the Tweet overlay, but it’s in the foreground of my immediate radar of experimentation.
  
• GeoSearch – This feature does require an HTML5-ready browser, but I can see some relevant applications of geo-sourcing conversations and mentions of specific keywords.  This could be a helpful feature in a variety of front-end research projects for strategy development or even marketing campaign planning, especially for companies at the local level with franchises, dealers, retail locations and even small business.  For the league JetSetters (you know who you are), what will be interesting to see is how traveling users apply this feature using mobile devices.  The HootSuite iPhone app has become one of my mobile weapons of choice.
• Drag & Drop Upload – This works beautifully from what I’ve experience thus far and was voted a favorite feature by my friend, Christian Adams.  Drag-and-drop functionality simply makes things easier and less time-consuming.  Enough said.  Well done, HootSuite5.
• Enhanced FaceBook – This is one of my personal favorites thus far.  From a consumption angle, the new display is much more pleasing.  At some points, it changes my display when I submit a status update, but at this point, I can’t say for certain what triggers that change.  I’ll be digging into this more as well.
  
• New ReTweets – I’m not much of a fan about how the ReTweet function works as is on Hootsuite5, in that it automatically sends the message without allowing me to add my own text into the message.  However, the savvy Traci Knoppe shared a work-around that she has discovered.  It works nicely!
  
• Localization – This is not new to social media aggregators in the same category.  In fact, Tweetdeck has had this functionality for months.  While it’s a great idea, it does typically require a more specialized user to take advantage of this feature.  As is, I can see it being applicable in terms of individuals tasked with global and international business development, or even in the European market where folks speaking a different language may only be a short train ride away.  In the US, not so much. Also, I want to be able to change my geographic location.  For instance, talking with Mike Brown today, I learned that Twitter was abuzz with talks of a new social media club in Kansas City, MO.  From a research standpoint, I might want to then search for the terms “Social Media Club” and geo-target that search to the appropriate zip code (per Mike’s suggestion).  Do you see where I’m going with this?
• Instaload – I’m not entirely sure I notice a difference on this just yet and need some more time to play.  That said, the real issue in my mind is with Twitter itself.  It seems that recently, I’ve been receiving the ever-popular “Twitter API is down” message across the top of my columns.  What’s that all about, Twitter?
• Themes – I like that I can now personalize my dashboard with themes.  Users can pick from any of the three current options available!  Hmmmm. One suggestion would be to release additional themes or give users the ability to brand the application to their business or even their own personal liking.  Jason Velliquette, for instance, fancies seeing HootSuite5 “Zoolander inspired themes!” Who knows?  Maybe custom HootSuite5 themes will provide an additional quick and easy market opportunity for freelance designers.  It did for Twitter backgrounds.

This is round one for me.  If you are using HootSuite5, I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback on feature sets, design, and anything else you are experiencing.

What’s your take?

I’m thinking about writing a short eBook that I’ll host on my blog and provide to you free of charge.

For months now, Twitter-related links have been the main traffic referral source to my blog.  You’ll notice that I don’t have a lot of subscribers, compared to other bloggers that I benchmark myself against.  It’s frustrating.  But in traveling recently, I’ve met people from all over who tell me that they’ve been reading my blog for some time. To be honest, those comments were appreciated, but also surprising.  My subscriber count is really low.

Then, Mike Brown said something that got my gears turning.  When I asked him: “Do you subscribe to my blog?”  He answered:  “No.  But I do read your posts from Twitter every day.”My average daily returning traffic is somewhere around 3,500 visitors.  My current subscriber count on Feedburner at the time of this post is 142.  I have over 17,000 followers on Twitter and that continues to grow.

Distributing and Consuming Media

I put a lot of work into using Twitter to share content and feed the system.  There seems to be this idea of 12:1 in terms of presence building, meaning that to be successful in building your online brand, you need to promote the work and ideas of others 12 times more than you promote your own stuff.  Realistically, I average tweeting about 15 to 25 social objects that I don’t own each day.

I think that this is, in part, the result of my own media consumption patterns.  I primarily use email subscriptions and Google Reader to stay up on what’s happening and the bloggers that influence me.  Reading posts from tweets and links is rare for me, except when someone directly copies me on a tweet with a call to click.

This makes me wonder: am I weird?  Are most people doing things differently today?  I want to find out how you get your media.  Will you take this poll I’ve started in LinkedIn?  Pretty please?

What Presence Building on Twitter Really Means

I believe presence building is mainly about creating yet another lever.  By showing up to and participating in the online cocktail party, we build more than just a following. We open opportunities for real relationships.

Recently, my friend Desarae was in town from Minneapolis.  We met on Twitter.  While she was in Columbus, I introduced her to many of my close friends using Twitter.  It was easy.

What’s funny is that another friend, Mike Cordes, introduced us.  He did that using Twitter as the medium.  You might notice his Twitter picture and the blue TweetMyTime jersey.  I met Mike on Twitter when he asked if he could join team TweetMyTime at the Columbus Marathon.  To this day, all three of us primarily communicate using Twitter because it’s fast, easy and loads of fun.

Do you get where I’m going with this?

McLuhan was right.  The medium really is the message.  In social penetration, frequency of communication is important.  A medium like Twitter allows for unobtrusive frequency to be easy, while also taking advantage of Chris’s idea on Anywhen.

It would seem then that using Twitter as a primary communication tool to find and build relationships is a statement of human brand value.  For instance, one might get the message:

• “I’m here because I’m open to meeting new people”
• “I enjoy talking with other humans and I want to do it often, even when I’m doing other things.”
• “I know that you are too busy for random 10 minute phone calls and respect that.  I can talk with you in 14o characters or less when you have time to respond.”

Twitter is also a numbers game.  The larger you build your presence (presence being thought of as a phone book, in this sense), the more you can leverage the nature of serendipity.  Not every follower will end up as a true relationship, but if conversion of those relationships is a small percentage, then a larger presence will also equal a larger percentage.

From a small business lens, I believe presence building is absolutely essential.  Why?  As a small business owner, you have limited dollars and even more constraints on your time.  In that sense, building strong relationships through more frequent communication provides a competitive advantage in terms of finding opportunities (leveraging serendipity) and retaining customers (building stronger, lasting relationships).

Humans Marketing Channels and Theater of the Mind

Essentially, marketing creates leverage.  In the traditional sense, marketing messages help to position the product or service in the mind of the end consumer so that when the consumer finally hits the point of purchase – whether it’s a checkout counter, shopping cart or B2B account executive – they already want to buy what you sell.

But now things are much different.  Communication tools have changed in such a way that we humans have an entire arsenal that allows individuals the ability to create the leverage that you once needed a department of people to accomplish.

Human marketers are artists at creating theater of the mind.  This is the idea of using technology to create the illusion of being everywhere at once, and all the time.  This type of visibility driven largely by using Twitter has helped to create a new breed of celebrities and heros, fueled by both intellect and inherent charisma.

Visibility is also the sister of accessibility, which is very different from the celebrities of older media such as television and radio.  Celebrities in those mediums are primarily exclusive and work hard to stay away from the commoners by using money and status as the barrier.

Yet, humans are delighted when someone they admire is accessible to them.  Twitter, as a communication tool, provides that type of accessibility but also the convenience to make communication manageable.  For instance,  think about how many tweets your favorite blogger or author must get each day. I’m willing to bet that if you tweet them right now, they will probably respond, even if it’s only a few words and an emoticon.  When these popular (and busy) folks do respond, how does that make you feel?

As mobile devices improve over time, so will our ability to master this type of communication illusion.

What This eBook Will Be About

I want to write this to teach you how to build presence and create your own illusions, starting first with Twitter.  Here’s the basic overview of my ideas for chapters:

• How I Listen and a Few Other Ways to Approach Listening to the Web
• Selecting Your Presence Building Tools and Knowing Why
• The Importance of Frequency and Timing
• Copy Writing in 140 Characters for Successful Presence Building
• One-to-One Conversations in the Public Twitter-Sphere
• Leveraging The Social Graph of Others for Friendly Mutual Gains
• Feeding the System with Value without Being Boring
• Conversational Social Marketing and Response (Guest-Written Chapter)
• Hub & Spoke:  How To Tips for Business Blog Content Distribution on Twitter and the Effects

But before I put a ton of effort into a project like this, I want to ask you:

Will this be of value to you?  Will you read it?  And most importantly, what would you add?

Please let me know in the comments…

Twitter Lists have been one of the best innovations our friends in San Francisco have come up with, in my humble opinion.  There are so many possible ways Twitter Lists can be used – we’ve only just started to scratch the surface. Trust me on this one.

Part of using Twitter, Twitter Lists, and social media as a whole, is looking at yourself as a user from the outside in.  How often do you think of yourself in terms how you look as an agent in the Matrix (yes, the movie…).

We all have mentors and groups of people we admire in our business lives.  I certainly do.  And in the end, everyone has somebody who we see as a successful role model.  We want to be like our role models.  That’s the whole “model” part of the term, right?

Benchmarking Using Twitter Lists
Ever wonder how the content you share on Twitter stacks up against the folks you dig as relevant and helpful?  Maybe your group is other business owners in your local market.  Maybe it’s your competitors?  Your Twitter List might be made up of other nationally recognized bloggers or bloggers in your niche market?

Whatever your list is, here’s a self-benchmarking idea you might try in 5 easy steps:

• Build a Twitter List of all the people you want to benchmark yourself against
• Add yourself to that Twitter List
• Set up that Twitter List as a column in whatever social media monitoring tool you use (Hootsuite, Seesmic and Tweetdeck are what I use)
• Monitor the column and take notice of what your group tweets out over the course of a day, week or ongoing
• Tweet out the content you normally do over the course of the day

As you watch, ask yourself some of these questions:

• How often do my tweets show up in the stream in comparison to the other members of the list? Do I tweet frequently enough to be noticed?
• How does your content look next to theirs?  Similar?  Different?
• Are my Twitter List members sharing more links than I am?  Where do those links lead to?
• What type of content do they share?  What are they vetting as relevant?
• How do the folks on my Twitter List structure their tweets?  Are mine similar or different?
• What’s the number of @replies the folks on my Twitter List typically tweet through out the day?  Do I talk with that many people?

What questions would you add to your own self-benchmarking as a Twitter user?

I’m pleased to feature the very talented Hannah DeMilta as a guest blogger today.

Hannah and I met a few months back via social media, and found that we both shared the Otterbein College experience in Westerville.  She is set to graduate from Otterbein this Spring and has already begun weaving the threads of her professional network, in large part with the relationships she’s built using tools like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

In my opinion, Hannah is an extraordinary example of  how students can jump ahead of the career curve by making a commitment to using social media tools to reach career goals, developing a personal brand presence and networking like crazy.  My advice?  Keep your eye on Hannah.  She is on the rise.

Hannah DeMilta blogs about PR, college, her career goals and other communication-related topics.  Here are a few how-to tips from her own experience using Twitter to promote the Otterbein PRSSA PaRtners Conference.

HOW TO Promote an Event Using Twitter

There are some simple ways we are using Twitter to promote our upcoming event.

PaRtners Conference is a one-day event being held at Otterbein College on April 24. It is geared toward public relations and communications students, organized by Otterbein PRSSA (Public Relations Student Society of America). You might consider some of these same details when promoting your next event through Twitter.

We decided not to create a separate Twitter account for the conference. We had already built a following for @OtterbeinPRSSA and decided to focus on the network we already had. We knew that a lot of our followers were communication students, PRSSA chapters and local professionals already invested in what we had to say. A lot of times I see groups create new accounts a month before their event and they don’t have the time to build their following. Don’t reinvent something that is already working for you, because your followers won’t need to be messaged from two accounts.

The alternative to developing a new Twitter handle was establishing a conference hashtag. We wanted to be very clear on what the official tag was before other people could come up with their own. We chose #ocpartners because it was short and hopefully easy to remember. We shared the hashtag by tweeting it, listing it in emails, posting on fliers and our Facebook wall. There will also be a sign the day of the conference during registration. Don’t let someone else beat you to the punch, as it’s part of your event’s brand.

We also utilized additional hashtags that are popular with PR and communications students. Some examples are #PRSSA (general PRSSA tag), #PRSSANC (PRSSA National Conference), #PRStudChat (a popular PR student chat on Twitter), and #COPRSA (Central Ohio PRSA). You will have to research if there are appropriate hashtags to partner with your event tweets.

Another Twitter feature that many aren’t taking advantage of is lists. We created a list called ocpartners with the sub-line “Speakers, organizers & registered participants for Central OH PaRtners Conference @ Otterbein 4/24” and added everyone who we knew was on Twitter. Generally people love being put on lists so it was a positive decision regardless. It also created visibility for people who viewing the list. It allows students to network more easily with their peers and attending speakers, beforehand.

Follow some basic guidelines when promoting your own event:

• Use Twitter as a way to properly promote to your network, not spam them.
• Make sure you are communicating with the people who are actually potential attendees.

If properly executed, Twitter can be a quick and low-cost way to spread the word.

What advice would you share?  Have you successfully used Twitter to promote a past conference or event?

Photo credit: eellewzeeya

Getting more Twitter followers seems to be a big trend and, at the same time, a heated topic of debate in social media.

When I launched the new NateRiggs.com last week, I sent a direct message to Chris to let him know a new design was up and running and to get his feedback on anything I might have missed.

Hat tip to Chris, as he was kind enough to share the content via a tweet to his tweeps, which, might I add, is more than ten times my current sphere of influence on Twitter.  What you’re looking at in the screenshot of my Google analytics was, in large part, the result of one mention from Chris.  Pretty crazy spike in web traffic, huh?

Two Sides of Using Twitter
There are two sides to the Twitter followers argument.  Let’s break it down.

• People who believe that you should only spend time on Twitter connecting with the people you actually know or will some day meet
• People who believe that on Twitter you can gain information flow and a potential advantage from connecting with just about anyone

My personal opinion on the issue goes back to one question: How do you want to use the tool?

Localization & Niche
In their book, Tactical Transparency, Shel Holtz and John C. Havens make a comparison of Twitter to “a sort of Web 2.0 telegraph system.”  That definition would bucket the medium as a two-way communication tool, focused on the sending and receiving of messages between humans.  I’ve always liked that definition.

If you think about it, we as Twitter users tend to have online conversations with the same groups of people on a regular basis.  For the most part, your active core followers will be made up of the people you interact with on a regular basis.  This can be determined by your geographic location and even your niche interests, depending on how frequently you engage, but you will have some type of deeper relationship offline with the people you tweet with most frequently.

If you live in Columbus, Ohio, you probably tweet frequently with other Columbus natives.  If you are a marketer, you might tweet with other marketers who live outside of your home base.  Much like the profile-centric social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn or Ning communities, for example), Twitter has started to make a move to it’s own niche communities.  The localization of Twitter lists and, more recently, location-based trending topics, would seem to suggest that microblogging is becoming a smaller and more manageable world.

For some users, keeping a smaller follower and following base makes sense in regards to using it as a fast and effective communication tool.  This approach is not much different than how users would view text messaging.

Broadcast Approach
One the other hand, Twitter has been compared by many to a sort of broadcast tool, with similar qualities to how radio waves are sent out to the masses.  There’s merit in this argument in that the rules of the medium and the ease of following new people make it very useful for sharing information with the masses.  In the case of helping me to promote my new blog design, Chris was able to double my blog traffic by tapping into his social graph with one well-positioned tweet of less than 140 characters.

So, what does all that mean?

Numbers Game
In the more promotional sense, Twitter is a numbers game.

What I mean is that you can expect a very small percentage of your followers to actually convert on any action you would like them to take.  Those actions could be to retweet your content, follow a link or even engage with you in conversation via replys or direct messages.  At any rate, your percentage of action will be small.

Always keep in mind that there are literally thousands of tweets streaming through the system every minute.  In the context of an expansive microblog, it’s easy for content to get buried and disappear.  By adding more followers to your account, your small percentage of conversion will grow in parallel.

To illustrate this idea, let’s say that your tweets convert at a 1% rate.  Here’s the basic math:

• 1,000 followers X .01 = 10 people who’ve clicked on your link
• 10,000 followers X .01 = 100 people who’ve clicked on your link
• 100,000 followers X .o1 = 1,000 people who’ve clicked on your link

Pretty simple.

Why then would getting more Twitter followers be to your advantage?

The truth is, if you want to use Twitter for more promotional actions like building blog readership, creating awareness of your Facebook page or website, or any conversion-focused activity, actively building your base of followers is going to be time well spent.  If you’re more focused on using Twitter in the communication sense, you may not need to spend the time expanding your following.

How are you using Twitter today?  Do you see any advantage to changing your strategy?

Do you still do business cards?  I sure do, and probably always will.

Some of the more digital humans have stopped using them or become very negative toward business card carriers.  They might have a point.

For instance, Chris put out this Kitchen Table Talk last week on the subject of handing out business cards at conferences and events.  For the most part, I agree with his ideas on how we have become conditioned to attend events and chuck out cards left and right.  I agree that not everyone you meet at an event is someone you will end up doing business with.  I totally get that some events have even become business card factories where more importance is placed on how many cards you give out, rather than who receives them.  All good points.

But in a world that’s going digital at an almost alarming rate, I need to keep some things tangible.

The Purpose of Business Cards
This is pretty simple if you think about.  Business cards were invented so that humans could share contact information without having to write it down time after time.

Essentially, a business card is a tangible reminder of a conversation.  If you’re like me, you might even scribble short notes on the back of cards if you’re in a fast-paced conversation.  Trading business cards also helps to remind me to stay on top of my database.  If you live the lifestyle of networking or just like to attend events, you probably get why this is critical.  It’s so easy to forget a name or company, or worse, get someone you meet confused with someone else. That makes for an awkward situation.

If you are Chris and people flock to you, they also make a point to track you down.  Chris is memorable and everywhere.  And to his credit, he’s worked really hard to earn the right to that type of attention.  But in reality, most of us aren’t there yet, so we have to work hard to follow up, rekindle conversations and build deeper connections.

That process starts with first remembering why you want to stay in touch with someone you meet, and second, having enough information to make it happen.

Less Is More
The standard to this point has been to have information on your card that includes your name, title, email, phone number, company address, logo, etc.  In the past year, including choice social media profiles has also been a trend.  If that suits you, go for it.  I have cards that contain all that information because the individuals I typically meet with one-to-one expect to see it.  My personal opinion (after I printed my cards) is that it’s overkill.

I like Evan Terry’s cards that you see in the picture.  Evan has made things simple.  Email; cell phone; and in BIG, BOLD letters, his Twitter handle.  Can you guess where I reconnected with Evan first?  What I like about Evan’s approach is that with one Twitter profile, I get a nice headshot of him and a link to his LinkedIn profile.  When I visit his LinkedIn profile, I get everything else, including a whole mess of information on his skills, experience and his network of connections.  This is everything I need to continue building a relationship.

You Can Make Better Cards
Maybe you should have two sets of cards.  Is there any rule that says you can’t have one card for your company and one card for Brand YOU?  Who knows?  Maybe you already have a personal brand card.  At any rate, here are some ideas that you can use if you want to go in this direction.

• Include a headshot or some type of photo.  Some people are great with faces, but terrible with names. (That would be me…)
• Include one or two online points of contact and one offline point of contact.  Less is more.
• Make your points of contact the places you check the most often.  For instance, if you’re not a big Twitter user, why bother to list it on your card?  If someone connects with you and you take three weeks to respond, what impression does that leave?
• Choose a brand color for yourself and own it.  People tend to remember brand colors easily.  For bonus points, wear or carry something with your brand color.  What color do you like?
• Choose a card with decent weight.  Thicker cards tend to weather better in backpacks, pockets and suitcases.
• You may want to keep your card a standard size.  This is a personal preference, but cards that are different shapes and sizes don’t stack well.

What’s your take on the whole business card thing?  Do you still carry?  Are you thinking about getting personal cards?

The Skyline Exhibitor Exchange was jam-packed with ideas on how social media tools can integrate into a trade show exhibition strategy.  The goal is to extend the live event experience to the online space.

My co-presenters, Will Burrus, Tiffany Odutoye and Eric Leslie, all brought some serious material to share.  It was literally a “drink from the firehose” type of event.  As promised, I wanted to produce a list of some of the tools I had mentioned so that attendees could check back and explore the options.  You’re obviously welcome to check out anything as well, even if you couldn’t make it.

First, my slides from the presentation:

And here is the list with links to all of the cool tools:

FlowTown.com
I learned about this killer new application from blogger and social media strategist Jason Baer.  It’s one of the first in a big movement towards the convergence of email and social media technology.  A user can upload or manually enter email addresses and pull back a variety of social media profiles registered to those email addresses.  It’s a killer time-saving application that you, as an exhibitor, can use to connect with attendees, once the trade show has provided the list.

Highrise CRM and BatchBook
Socially integrated CRM’s are growing in availability.  You may not have the liberty to choose what database you use within your company, but each of these tools are delivered as SaaS and at low enough price points that one could justify using a separate database for your exhibiting efforts.  Both of these tools will allow you to link to specific social media profiles and pull dynamic content (like recent tweets, blog posts and LinkedIn updates) right to the attendees page in the database, giving you one centralized access point for a ton of information you can use to build relationships before, during and after the show.  I’ve used both and currently use BatchBook.

Twitter Lists
I love that Twitter has made the move to create the sense of niche communities via lists.  You can build a Twitter list for each show you attend and add attendees as you find them.  Then, watch the list, listen and engage when the time is right.  You can also use Hootsuite, Seesmic Desktop and even TweetDeck to manage lists.

Profile Based Networks
Communication is fast and sporadic on things like Twitter.  It’s always a good idea to transition a virtual relationship to one of your profile-based networks like LinkedIn, Facebook or even niche-networks for a more permanent connection and increased data flow from your target attendees.

Collecta
I heart Collecta.  It’s a real time-saving search engine that allows to search for keywords related to the name of your trade show, event or even the show hash tag, delivering updates as they come in.  Collecta kicks Twitter Search’s butt because it also pulls back blog posts, blog comments, videos, images and more.  It’s just an all-around great tool with so many uses at a trade show.

Branded Hash Tags
Not really anything to link to on this.  I say branded because it’s important to keep your company’s name out there when you are exhibiting.  Use a hash tag to make your booth stand out and remember to tweet often.

The Side Arms
Make sure to equip your booth staff with the best sidearms for the job.  Since their attention needs to be on the people coming to your booth, a good and easy-to-use smart phone is the best device.  Also, remember to include some type of pocket video device.  My current favorite for noisy events is the Kodak Zi8 because of it’s external mic capabilities.

Skype Recorder
You may have seen my Skype Sessions.  Skype and Skype Recorder are the tools I use to make these interviews-at-a-distance happen.  Rather than following up with your prospects to try and schedule a capabilities demonstration for your products or services, why not give them some social capital by featuring them on your company blog.  By doing this, you might just build a relationship that leads to a sale when your prospect is ready to buy.

TripIt
This application has been around for a while, but it’s a great tool.  Use TripIt to enter in your travel information.  It integrates with LinkedIn, and will allow you to see your connections who live within a certain radius of your destination, providing potential opportunities for more live meetings.  To make it work for trade show follow-ups, you’ll need to connect with your booth visitors on LinkedIn first.

And finally, my takeaway I wish for you from the Skyline event, produced by the amazing Eric Leslie…

What’s your take?  Is this helpful?

Related show

• Nate Riggs:
  Nate Riggs
• Events:
  2010 Speaking Events
• Date:
  Thu, Mar 4th
  
• Time:
  7:30am
• City:
  
  Nate Riggs in
  Hilliard, Ohio
• Venue:
  Skyline Exhibitor Exchange
• Country:
  US
• Notes:
  Panelist & Content Organizer
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