Optimizing a Tweet, Connecting Topic with Timing

Since Jack Dorsey first launched Twitter it has quickly became apparent how much data we can fit and share in under 140 characters. And while shortening links, using hashtags and abbreviating words have become commonplace, here are two simple methods to help optimize your tweets.

Timing: More than Memes

In the world of instant communication, timing is everything. During the 2013 Super Bowl half time show, the power went out for most. For Oreo cookies however, the light went on as they threw together a quick tweet that read “You can still dunk in the dark.” The post was retweeted 15,000 times and their following increased by about 8,000 followers.

Perhaps your thinking, that’s Oreo and the Super Bowl, what about the rest of us on a day-to-day basis?

The answer to that is knowing your audience, and this takes research. Know when your followers are on and when they are active. There are oodles of tools to assist in this but my personal favorite is SEOMoz’s Followerwonk. While a majority of its services are paid, you can analyze your followers for free. The result looks something like this.

Targeted Topic: Informed Hashtags

It’s easy to throw a hashtag at the end of a tweet to gain exposure about a topic, but many times there are synonyms that people are using more. In general, as always, Twitter values brevity (i.e. using #marketing instead of #digitalmarketing). But you can take it further than that. To make informed decisions about hashtags visit Hashtags.org. It will analyze the popularity of any given hashtag over the last 24 hours giving you an idea of popularity on any given day (and if you pay, even suggest more popular hashtags).

To take it further than this, you could do your own research (or buy a Hashtag.org membership, but it isn’t cheap). Use one hashtag and analyze and print off each day of the week for a few weeks. Then over the course of a month see if you notice a topic trends over a particular day and time over another. This can then be overlaid with what you know about your current existing followers’ favorite time to tweet to fully optimize topic and timing.

Know of other services worthy of note? I’d love to hear about them.

The Evolution of Remarketing

It’s generally more cost effective to improve sales with current customers than seeking new ones—but what about the ones in between? Those that have demonstrated interest in your product but for whatever reason never converted to a sale.

In the digital marketplace these people are everywhere from the ones that abandoned their shopping cart to the ones who got halfway through your site and exited for whatever reason. You were so close, if only you could give them a second chance—that’s where remarketing comes in.

Remarketing is marketing to audiences with a demonstrated interest in your product or service but did not convert. Traditionally, it’s meant people that have visited one of your owned services and using that information to piece together an ad tailored to their interests. Tailoring typically involves three steps:

1. Custom combination lists

This is going into Google Adwords and creating customized lists of non-converters.

2. Segment users and determine duration/frequency

Once you have these lists, segmenting them into more specific categories that you will then allotment duration of time in between visit and ad as well as frequency once time period is over. Often it’s beneficial to use a focus group to determine best practice for lists as a whole.

3. Personalize messaging

Arguably the part that is the most fun—creating ads that target each segmented list and implementing them across decided time tables.

And this practice of remarketing doesn’t just have to be limited to non-convertors or even data harvested from your own website. This is a great practice for upselling to current convertors who perhaps still left five items in their shopping cart and maybe just didn’t feel like dropping all that cash in one day. Hold onto that data and hit them with it next pay cycle. People’s finances change every two weeks but their interests do not.

Also there is new software being developed which provides data for users that have demonstrated similar interests. An example is Microsoft’s Search Companion. It enables you to take keyword data from a user’s search behavior to understand their interests so you can remarket where others have failed. 

Lastly, it should be worth mentioning if you’re going through all this trouble—don’t use the same messaging you did before. The whole point of remarketing is not only timeliness and persistence, but to come at the sale from another angle and that means coming up with new ad ideas and more informed concepts. If all steps are successful no doubt your CRO and ROI will rise.

So happy remarketing people, and be sure to keep it fresh.

The End of Google Reader and the Continuing Trend of Tech Changes

It is has been decided by the Google gods—Reader no longer has a place at the Google table and will be put down like Old Yeller. While this may come as a shock to many who have learned to depend on the service like the personalized RSS newspaper it is (myself included), it is a great example of how competitive tech companies are remaining competitive—by NOT listening to the public.

Yes, this is typically the quickest way to lose your customers and in turn your competitive edge but to be true leaders in the marketplace (companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple) realize to make their visions happen, they need to make big changes and many of those are going to be at first, very unpopular. They understand they can’t have it all, but to have the most sometimes you need to give up the little parts—and Reader unfortunately has been deemed one of those parts.

So what’s the big picture? Only the big companies know, but instead of petitioning the past, we should be casting chicken bones for the future. It’s an exciting one for users and marketers alike. And lucky for us, there are plenty of small companies to pick up the scraps. Feedly, Pulse, NetVibes, NewsBlur, the list goes on, are all chomping at the bit to take in this new business. Will these companies leave us to develop bigger and better things as well? Of course they will. But first they’ll have to impress us with a better Google Reader.

New Twitter Ad API: Bring on the Campaigns, and the Doozies

In the gold rush to harvest marketing dollars and user information, Twitter has finally taken the next step to monetizing their service by building out an ad API to allow marketers to purchase ads through their already existing dashboards.

To the consumer, this doesn’t mean much, but to marketers—Twitter just got a lot juicier.

More Campaigns, Better Engagement and Stronger Targeting

No longer limited by running a single ad at a time, marketers can now roll out, manage and track multiple Twitter campaigns successfully. The APIs also enable brands to use those dashboard tools to listen and engage more accurately, both improving the user and advertiser experience.

Outlined in AdWeek, Michael Lazerow, chief marketing officer of Salesforce Marketing Cloud explains.

"Because we have a robust listening solution and engagement solution, we can listen to what people are saying [on Twitter about a brand] and engage with them and take any of their tweets and promote them.”

Needless to say, this thirty party sponsorship could take some getting used to from the user end, but in reality it is no different than getting a power retweet.

So say a user tweets about in an Oreo they prefer the cookie to the frosting. Using your dashboard you pick up the mention and can either engage them with others who side the same, or more interestingly argue the opposite. Once you get them in the same thread together you can let the sparks fly and sponsor the genuine adverts that come up in conversation.

Where It Can Go Wrong

While post sponsoring is very much about timing and spontaneity, brands should be wary that sponsoring a tweet carries the weight of the brand just like an advertisement. Whereas it used to take days or even weeks to get a print ad approved it now takes the click of a button to sponsor a customer’s thoughts. And with targeted marketing getting better and better, customers have a low tolerance for mismatched adverts or poorly put together ideas.

Take for example this post sponsored by Miracle Whip under #SEO, a hashtag typically used by people with e-marketing and development backgrounds. A properly thought up campaign would be use hashtag #mayonnaise, #sandwich or #tuna and leave the #SEO for businesses such as SEOMoz, Screaming Frog or other similar focuses. Instead Miracle Whip has blindly hopped on a keyword that gets a lot of results and they end up looking out of place.

While it can be easily corrected by deletion, you could have thousands of impressions in just a few seconds—not to mention the few that are likely to take screenshots. This can leave your brand looking, to say the least, open mouthed and foolish.

Can you think of other poorly done examples? Is your brand sponsoring tweets? How successful have the results been? I’d love to hear your comments below.

Dark Social: The Newest Buzzword and Its Analytic Impact

While as marketers we’ve been able to successfully develop methods to track user engagement across web pages and social networks, there is one human factor we can add to our analytic repertoire: how users share content OFF the grid. Typically revolving around cutting and pasting to share via G-chat,  Facebook message or other form of text this sharing does not only makes up a considerable section of what we’ve previously lumped into direct hits, but makes up the most engaged and important demographic of visitors. This is dark social, or organic social—the dark spot on our social analytic radar.

Because sharers aren’t necessarily readers, it’s difficult to measure how many people are actually reading our content. In fact in social networks it’s standard behavior to repost content to piggyback or emphasize the originator’s values or statement. But people that are sending to their friends individually are digesters. They are the true active and consuming customer you seek as a content marketer.

It’s what as marketers we’re always after, the most intimate connections possible, because those are the longest lasting and most profitable. And while the share button has gotten more and more prevalent, meaningful referrals are more and more powerful and hard to come by. And the trail of connections has led us here, to the dark social gates.

So we’re here, how do we pillage it? What can we track and how can I package this to my boss in a colorful folder labeled “Dark Social ROI”?  Here’s the kicker: you can’t. Technically speaking it’s more of a factor to consider than a weaponized marketing utensil—a new way to mentally segment our direct hits in a slightly more specific manner. But this is good news! Good news because it gives us a little more positive outlook on our direct hits—that a section of them are true believers and consumers of our brand to the point of referring them ways we cannot (yet) account for. And for those that just see it as a buzzword, they never really understood the value of social media anyway.

So add it to your dictionaries folks, dark social just made our analytics a little bit brighter.

For a detailed report on how dark social impacts analytics check out this article from The Content Lab.

Target Looks for the Next Best Thing, By Asking

So we all know retailers have to evolve their selling experience—fast. The in-store experience has marred by m- and e-commerce, but where to begin? You could ask your in-house people for ideas, but these are people you hired on previous selling models. People whose natural agenda is to keep their own job and not suggest a project that gets them canned. If you want fresh, you need to look outside your comfort zone—the wild, worldwide web.

And Target is teaming up with Fast Company to do just that.

In their new challenge campaign, Co.Labs & Target Retail Accelerator, both companies are giving away $75,000 to the winner and $10,000 to seven other finalists who can come up with an awesome mobile shopping service that extends the Target customer experience in a useful, instructive or entertaining way. Emphasis is on the following: social, education, in-store, personalization, completeness, design, technical expertise, date and magic. Target will own the winning app and outstanding entries will be highlighted by Fast Company’s Co.Labs.

Salivating yet? You can find the contest rules here.

Submissions close April 30, 2013 and the Grand Prize Winner will be  announced July 1, 2013.

How Fallon Is Trailblazing Creative

Creatives can be difficult people to work with. Not only do they not think like others, but they don’t think like each other—and this is incredibly important to their success and fulfillment as individuals.

Many organizations recognize this, as well as how important this value is to the success of their company as a whole. Neglecting this issue leads to decreased employee satisfaction, higher turnover and lower quality work. But what can companies do about it? How can they cater to such a variety of minds and talent? With deadlines and clients aplenty who has time for such tailoring?

In a little Instagram campaign called #Make5, Minneapolis-based agency Fallon has began giving each employee five days to create something creative of their choosing. The only stipulations are it must be to the level of work Fallon aspires and it will be shared across their Instagram account using the hashtag #Make5. Sound like a complete waste of time? Here are a few reasons why it’s not.

Be Generous to Your Employees and They Will Be Generous with their Work

Sure, employees love the boss that gives financial bonuses, but why? To show appreciation. And when a holiday or birthday comes around what means more to people, giving them cash or giving them a thought?

Creatives, the best creatives, put their hearts into their work. They take big risks everyday they work for your business. If they were in it for the money they would be doing something else, plain and simple. So giving them money is like giving a friend twenty pairs of socks for their birthday—we’re appreciative, we’ll use them, but once they’re used up we’ll forget we ever received them.

True appreciation is not the same. And true appreciation comes from the currency we all value most—our time. We all are only on this earth for a limited amount. People with heart know this the most. And these are the people you want to hire—and keep. By giving them time you show appreciation through trust in not only their dedication to their work but their talent as a creative. And that reaches deep.

The Path to Optimizing Work Efficiency Is Not Always Linear

We’re all busy. We all have too many clients, projects and responsibilities to balance. That’s why we need to get started and do things now so we can get the most of them done. Wrong. Humans are not robots, and positions that require us to use parts of ourselves that are especially human such as creativity require work systems that incorporate our humanity. In an interview with Digiday, digital creative director Marc Stephens lays it out best.

“This gives creatives a chance to express themselves without rules. It’s important to keep creatives fresh and happy, to give them an outlet to do the things they want.”

If you want work done, just do it and keep doing it, but if you want exceptional work you need to think about process while evaluating the fulfillment of not only your client but your employees. It’s not easy, it may add another layer to your workload, but it will undeniably be what sets you apart from your competitors.

So what is coming out of the #Make5 campaign? Right now mostly paintings and illustrations but employees say they are hoping to take the initiative even further into short movies, poems or even songs.

Follow Fallon at WeAreFallon on Instagram to learn more.

Why We Can Give Up the Jobs in Retail, All of Them

Recently I decided in my need for extra cash to take a side job in retail. I figured the position would be a fun one; I would get to work with friends, chat up customers and obtain a heavy discount at one of my favorite clothing stores.

And for the first few weeks this is exactly what it was. The work wasn’t hard, I got to be social and I eventually even bought a suit. What I didn’t expect, but quickly remembered from my college years, was what we all know—retail sucks.

But why does it suck?

It doesn’t just suck because the work is boring, the pay is low or the management are frequently assholes; it sucks because its method is essentially flawed.

Consider the hierarchy for a moment. The majority of retail, the positions we described as containing the most suck, are sales. These underlings range from pants folders to customer service reps but the bottom line is they all have quota and typically, very particular instructions. Above them are managers. These middlemen and women were chosen for their ability to follow these instructions, and in turn make quota. Above them, and I’m hugely oversimplifying here, are the corporate decision makers. These people are the ones who come up with the quota, concepts and rules everyone else will follow. Now, take a minute to note these people either come from backgrounds in these types of decisions or have climbed their way from the lower levels of the business for the last twenty plus years.

So, who is actually facing the customer? Well, the most economical option of course—sales—the lowest paid due to the least amount of training and easy replace-ability. And how does corporate make up for this lack of knowledge for every customer-facing rep? They give them tag lines, uniforms and scripts to read from. So each employee looks and sounds the same. This is supposed to be a comfort to the customer, like going into every McDonald’s and getting the same Big Mac.

On some level this is a success. People like dependability, but is that really what they’re getting? Let’s take a deeper look.

Whenever anyone starts in sales they suck. Overtime, one of two things happen: they quit/get fired or they get it. They learn how to connect with customers and actually meet and eventually excel past their quota. Then they quit or get moved up. So basically the exact moment a rep truly understands sales, they’re removed from where the company needs them most. They get moved to management, where they are told to tell others what they’ve learned while taking directions from upstairs.

There is no room for innovation. Only until you've put a lifetime in with a company are you able to actually change the rules and by then your customer experience is most likely outdated.

This model has been around for a few generations for a reason. It made sense for what resources were available. Our governments and educational institutions were run in the same hierarchal system.  Experts led the masses who helped the customer.

This is changing.

During the industrial era many manufacturing jobs became obsolete. The ones that didn’t we shipped to China, Inda, Malaysia, etc. Now we're in the middle of doing the same with customer service and even occasionally sales. And some people are getting upset about that: they shouldn’t be.

We are entering a new digital era where, not unlike the industrial age, more of the process is automated. Only now it isn’t just the production process, it’s also the selling. And customer service is selling.

Look at Best Buy, a multinational consumer electronics corporation. In 2001, Best Buy was named “Speciality Retailer of the Decade” by Discount Store News. In 2004, Forbes magazine named them “Company of the Year”, and in 2006 even made their List of Most Admired Companies. This was a company that had the in-store retail experience down. They had massive store fronts that housed hundreds of big screen TVs and electronic devices. And customer service was important to them. They are known for having a greeter positioned at the door of every store to make sure you find everything you need.

In 2011 however, things changed. Best Buy saw its revenue slide to $651 million on revenue of $16.26 billion. The following year they closed at least fifty stores and started to shift to, wait for it, Best Buy Mobile stores.

This particular business marks a very specific shift in the marketplace. If you were to look at book sales you would have seen it for the last decade as Borders and Barnes & Nobles went down like dominoes. What was happening was customers were coming into Best Buy, testing the products, gathering knowledge about them and going back home and purchasing them online.

Heresy! So, you’re saying they’d prefer to buy from a website than a person?

Yes.

Let’s stop kidding ourselves. You can’t indoctrinate someone for minimum wage and expect them to give a genuine piece of themselves to a job that requires connection. And customers know this. In fact, many times it’s even uncomfortable to watch someone degrade themselves to this, and by now we’ve gotten REAL comfortable with the internet.

We trust Amazon, eBay and Apple more than we probably trust our local grocery store. The structure that uses in-store people for sales is no longer valued. That isn't to say that we won't have customer service--but these people will be highly skilled, well-paid and use their own creative personality across tools to reach larger audiences. A great example of one of these positions is a community manager. I know when I tweet a complaint to Urban Outfitters, I’ll get a carefully crafted response from someone that matters. Not a replaceable face at a storefront who is working for seven bucks an hour.

Through the internet, connectivity and widely available information has allowed thousands of jobs to be reduced to hundreds. For some people the question is daunting: Does this mean there will be layoffs? Yes, but I prefer the word liberations, because less people indoctrinated means more people creatively thinking, and more people creatively thinking means more industry leaders, increased market competition and better careers that don’t suck.