I used TwitterSheep to get this quick snapshot of how the people I follow on Twitter describe themselves.

In my case, this pretty much gels with what I already know. Though I was a bit surprised that “entrepreneurs” was so small. And while I’m tracking some athletes, I’ve put most of them on a list–and they’re largely not people I’m officially following.

You can also use this handy tool to peak in on your competitors to see who they’re interacting with (or at least lurking around). You might learn something unexpected.

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

I wrote here about the secret to a great client relationship (hint: it’s about how you communicate). Now I want to talk about a related issue: understanding how your audience is listening.

For example:

• Have you ever had someone say, “Well, I tweeted about that”?
  Okay, but I didn’t see your random tweet at a random-to-me time in a sea of tweets from the 500+ people I’m following.

• Have you ever had someone tell you they posted the event to their LinkedIn Group?
  Great, except I get a weekly digest and your event was three days ago.

• Have you ever had multiple people send you Facebook notifications for the same event, even though you’re on the organization’s distribution list and so have obviously received at least one event invitation (and possibly signed up already)?
  Gee, now you’re spamming me.

Here’s the problem: When you do this, you’re making assumptions about my behavior and how I use various social media channels. Get it right, and we’re cool. Get it wrong, and your message is lost. You become irrelevant. Or worse, I unfollow, unlink, or unfriend you.

Whether you’re asking directly, monitoring online behavior, or accessing analytics, it’s important to understand how people consume information.

What strategies do you use to understand how your audience is listening?

Note: This post originally appeared on IABC’s Communication World blog.

Photo by cogdogblog (Flickr).

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

Star Trek has a special protocol for establishing “first contact” with new civilizations. It has to do, first, with ensuring that the people are ready for aliens who come in peace on spaceships. More broadly, it’s about setting the stage for a fruitful relationship.

Closer to home, we’re having a hard time with this concept. Especially when using social media.

My gripe is with people who squander opportunities every day. The other day, for example, I tweeted in conversation that I was headed on a road trip to Albuquerque. Immediately, @AlbuquerqueApt and a second local company followed me on Twitter. But did either bother to say hello, suggest any cool restaurants, or point out a great hiking trail?

Now you might say that it doesn’t matter or that I’m not going to be in Albuquerque long enough to go hiking. But (1) they don’t know that, and (2) they don’t know who else I know who just might live there or be moving to the area. Contrast that to Busboys and Poets here in DC which tweeted me to say they looked forward to seeing me the next day. Or the Roger Smith Hotel, which I’d recommend in a heartbeat even though I’ve never stayed there.

Clearly, my point isn’t about brands on Twitter that don’t know anything about social media. It’s about business, and how you build communities.

Mitch Joel had a good post the other day about people who feel compelled to ask favors of strangers. He wrote:

Because we’re all intrinsically connected … many people are asking people do things that are over and above the social capital equity they have put into the relationship…

The real world is the same as the online world. In fact, even making the false assumption that our social rules do not apply online is silly (and wrong). One of the better mantras to embrace when it comes to engaging with Social Media is:“just because you can, it doesn’t mean that you should.”

While Joel is talking about presumed intimacy and I’m talking about failing to build intimacy, both are ultimately about lost opportunities.

Are you squandering first contact?

Photo by Scragz (Flickr).

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

There’s a scene in Robin Hood: Men in Tights when the merry band of men is trapped in a banquet hall. Prince John has just called in reinforcements: a seemingly invincible army of clanking armored men. Robin Hood looks for a moment, and then shoots an arrow at one. They all fall like dominoes.

Yesterday the Library of Congress announced that it intends to archive all public tweets. Alan Silberberg tweeted that live digital information being archived at the Library of Congress “should make people see what a sea change we are living through.”  Tom O’Keefe tweeted that the development is “great for psychology, technology, sociology, and history studies.”

They’re both right, of course. This is a watershed moment in the influence of digital media and an acknowledgement that each of us is a mover, shaker, and content creator. Like letters from civil war soldiers in an earlier era, tweets from Sudanese dissidents building support or tweets from people reacting to breaking news (think election night 2008, for example, or the responses last month to congressional passage of health reform legislation) can offer insights into both history and our psyche long after we’ve moved on to something new.

As the news broke, however, my first thought wasn’t to what this announcement means but to where it came from. Would this have happened now if there hadn’t been a concurrent push for open government and data transparency, or are Gov 2.0 and OpenGov initiatives the dominoes that set this curating push in motion?

Photo by Jo Jakeman (Flickr).

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

Last month, I wrote about Expert Labs’ initiative to crowdsource ideas and information to help policymakers reach better decisions. Now the White House is seeking our help in crafting big ideas. The process is simple:

• Think big.
• Tell the White House (via Twitter, e-mail, or Facebook)
• Tell you friends (and spread the word)

This is only one small step, but it’s really a big leap forward in thinking about how citizens can interact with our government.

Check out Anil Dash’s new post, Our Biggest Challenge Yet, for details.

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

Social media can be awesome. We can build amazing communities and engage with customers, clients, colleagues, and (new and old) friends across the globe. Heck, we can even tweet with people in space. And we have lots of people hard at work trying to create relevance algorithms.

What we haven’t done, however, is figure out a way for the tools to think for us.

Case in point: Samantha Strauss put out the following question on Twitter the other day: Is there a way to search and categorize those you follow on twitter? If not, there should be! Which app does it best? Strauss was looking for a less time-consuming process for sorting and tagging her friends and followers than manually looking at them one by one.

I’ve run into the same problem with Gist. The platform can aggregate enormous amounts of information–but organizing it can be a challenge. I’ve been playing with Gist’s new Outlook Plug-in, which I like because it shows me only information that’s relevant to the person I’m communicating with at that moment.

And that’s my point. As we identify and aggregate more and more information, we’re still limited by our brains in how quickly and  relevantly we process that data. Until, of course, we can clone ourselves and I can let Daria V2.0 do the sorting and tagging for me.

Photo by adactio (Flickr).

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

If you’ve ever sent a letter to your congressman or submitted comments in response to a proposed federal agency rule, then you know that talking to the government can be akin to screaming into the void. You have to jump hoops to submit your information, no one seems to be listening, and the response is almost always a form letter.

Anil Dash is trying to change that. He and Expert Labs are working on a project to revamp the way Americans communicate with our government. It’s a bold experiment in crowdsourcing ideas and information to help policymakers reach better decisions. At its heart, the project is testing ways to reaching out to people where they already are. So maybe it’s about letting people “like” ideas on Facebook, “favorite” tweets, or answer a question seeded on LinkedIn. Dash, who spoke at the ”.gov is the new .com” Sweets and Tweets event last week, said the incentive could be as simple as recognition (e.g., identifying the good and best answers on LinkedIn).

For more about what Dash had to say, OhMyGov has a great piece on DC’s emerging start-up culture and Debbie Weil has a good wrap-up (with links to photos and the livestreamed video).

Photo by Simon Yates (Flickr).

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

Want to know how communicators are using social media? You could pose a question on Twitter or you could do a deep dive. MarketingProfs did the latter, surveying 4,763 marketers and others managing communications for their organizations. That included 3,285 who specifically said they are responsible for social media.

I don’t have a copy of The State of Social Media Marketing, but I did get a peak at some of the findings. There is some great data here:

• 48.2 percent said their organizations have a social media presence. They are typically companies that have “very little to hide.” Companies in industries with strict regulations and major repercussions for leaking information (think drug makers, bankers, insurers) are less visible.
• 60.8 percent who do social media said that it is not part of their job description.
• Social media isn’t cheap: Most of those doing social media are mid- or senior-level people.
• 48.8 percent said their company has no official social media policy; 12 percent said they have a restrictive one.
• There is a correlation between culture and the success of a company’s marketing efforts. Employees who blog (independently) can spark new ideas and increase prestige.
• All the measurement tools are helpful, but incomplete. For example, 52.8 percent of those surveyed said that paid analytics tools are “helpful but incomplete” (versus 66.1 percent of those using Google and other free tools). And approximately one-third of respondents (33.6 percent) said that the paid tools “enable perfect tracking” (versus 28.1 percent for those using free tools).

There is also a lot of data about the disconnects between the tactics people use a lot (i.e., what’s popular) and the tactics that are most effective. For example, the most used tactics on Twitter are driving traffic (72.1 percent) and driving sales (54.2 percent)—how’s that worked out for you lately? In contract, the most effective Twitter tactics cited involved two-way communications strategies and monitoring for PR problems in real time.

Photo by webtreats (Flickr).

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

As some of you may know, I joined MarketingProfs last fall. There are two great values about the company/online resource: (1) community and (2) professional development. As a pro member, I have access to a vast store of case studies, reports, how-to articles, and live (and playback on-demand) Webinars. Which brings me to the point of this post.

One of my goals for this year is to participate in more Webinars–and then to pass on what I learn to you, my readers. Yesterday’s Webinar featured a conversation with Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki about doing business in 2010. Here are a few takeaways:

• Everything Is Not Free–Godin pointed out that lots of things (including personal connections) aren’t free. What is free: ideas, because the  middlemen are dying out.
• Marketing–Kawasaki pointed out that the days of marketing to that one influential voice (think New York Times reviewer) are over. Instead, he stressed the importance of seeding your products as far and wide as possible to “build a critical mass of nobodies.” Godin added that companies must “initiate or die.”
• Portable Tribes–Godin noted that people are increasingly living their lives in public, and that true communities “will follow us in our digital world.” Kawasaki countered that he really wasn’t that interested or influenced by what his friends were buying or liked. (I tend to agree with Kawasaki, but one participant raised a good point, as a marketer, about the value of that awareness.)
• Customer Service–Godin called customer service “a form of marketing far more powerful than advertising.” He added that, if you can delight someone, they’ll tell others. Referring to Comcast and Best Buy‘s Twitter strategies, Kawasaki suggested that “customer service is a weapon, and the social aspect of customer service is the leading edge of the weapon.”
• Passion–Godin pointed out that people are now both workers and owners (i.e., we can create and build), and he suggested that this would be the dividing line between what was and what will be. Kawasaki added that “the time to start innovating is before the recession ends.”

As a labor relations specialist before I was a business owner and communications strategist, I’m fascinated by this concept that we are both workers and owners. Chris Anderson used a similar analogy in remarks a few months ago, and I’m still trying to figure out how I can apply this concept better in my business.

Godin and Kawasaki offered some really good food for thought. Anything here inspire you?

Photo by billjacobus1 (Flickr).

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

In case anyone still thinks Twitter is all about what we ate for lunch, a look at Twitter’s top trending topics in 2009 should put that to rest for good.

The Iran election was the top trending news topic, with swine flu, Gaza, Iran, and Tehran rounding out the top five. #Iranelection was also the second most popular hashtag.

Twitter broke down trending topics in seven categories, including people, technology, and sports. Twitter’s chief scientist, Abdur Cowdhury, terms the trending topics “an interesting time capsule of what was happening as this decade came to a close.”

Other than observing the absence of lunch meats, anything you would add to this list?

Photo by Gary Burge. (Flickr).

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.