Presenting: 10 of the Smartest Big Brands in Social Media

While this is ostensibly a post about large national/global brands, I found the underlying lessons from these examples to be potentially useful to *anyone* seeking to use social media to build brand equity. You should definitely go read the original post for the full details on each campaign, but here’s my take on the important lessons from each one:

1. Blendtec Blends it on YouTube – Creativity is king; advertising is just content someone is willing to pay for you to watch, it doesn’t *have* to be annoying and uninteresting
2. Burger King and the Sacrifice Facebook Application – People like to have fun
3. Starbucks Asks for Your Advice – Making your customers feel like they’re part of the process builds brand loyalty through a sense of co-ownership
4. Sun Microsystems and the CEO Blog – Kill them with transparency (a variation on my dad’s old adage: ‘kill them with kindness’); disarm your critics by giving them a voice and answering them back
5. IBM With Lots of Blogs – Content == Authority; as long as it’s quality content (and on-brand), more *is* better on the Internet — it gives you higher search engine ranking and it doesn’t hurt to be the first thing a prospective customer finds when they do research on your area of interest/expertise (what do you think this blog is all about? )
6. Zappos on Twitter – A company (not just a brand) can have a personality in the Internet age, and it is defined by its employees; being accessible and relatable reminds your customers that there are real people behind your brand, and that tends to make them like you more (unless those real people really suck )
7. Comcast on Twitter too – Empower your community manager to address customers needs; Frank from Comcast doesn’t just spew marketing platitudes into the Twittersphere, he actually helps customers in need (Corollary: if you have an unempowered community manager fronting for your brand, he/she is bound to get slaughtered and likely do more harm to brand equity than good)
8. Ford and Social Media PR – Bad press doesn’t go away on the Internet; it’s not like the conventional media world in which all you need to do is weather *this* news cycle — that disparaging blog post will be popping up in searches for your brand for the rest of your life and beyond, so you’d better get out there and address it
9. Graco Uses Pictures on Flickr – *Every* customer should be writing a testimonial; make it so easy and fun for your customers to show their brand loyalty that it’s a no-brainer for them
10. Dell Doing it Everywhere – Social media isn’t media; this isn’t an ad buy you make selectively based on demographics and vertical content, it’s a horizontal platform for customer engagement comprised of many different elements — you may not have the time or resources to be everywhere, but take the time to craft a campaign in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts

Techmeme is an essential news discovery tool for me. It replaced my RSS reader and the totally unmanageable list of blog feeds that came with it years ago, and now I’d estimate that at least 95% of the news I consume is discovered via Techmeme or Twitter. For me, more than Digg or Hacker News or anything else, Techmeme is my social news source.

As such, it was big news to me when Techmeme announced this past Wednesday that they’re now accepting “tips” via Twitter. So much so that I was hoping (and even not so subtly suggesting) some of my Twitter “friends” would submit one of the blog posts I wrote since the feature was announced. But, then I realized  most of my friends didn’t know they could do this — and even if they did, the syntax is irregular (why “tip @techmeme” instead of just “@techmeme”?) and the whole process is a bit complicated.

So, it occurred to me we should have a “Digg It” equivalent embeddable call-to-action for Techmeme submission. Since no one else seemed to have made one yet, I took a stab:

Suggest to^?

As you can tell, I’m not a designer or a developer. I’m just a lowly product monkey, and this isn’t meant to be anything more than my version of a working feature spec.

That said, here’s the code:

<div class="techmeme-suggest-button">
<p style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small">
<a style="text-decoration: none" title="Suggest to Techmeme via Twitter" href="javascript:var d=document,f='http://twitter.com/home/',l=d.location,e=encodeURIComponent,p='?status=tip%20@Techmeme%20',q=e(l.href)+'%20'+e(d.title);1;try{if(!/^(.*\.)?twitter\.[^.]*$/.test(l.host))throw(0);share_internal_bookmarklet(p)}catch(z){a=function(){if(!window.open(f+p+q,'twitter'))l.href=f+p+q};if(/Firefox/.test(navigator.userAgent))setTimeout(a,0);else{a()}}void(0)">Suggest to <sub><img src="http://thesnowballfactory.com/images/techmemechicklet_16.png" border="0" alt="" /></sub></a><a style="text-decoration: none" title="What's this?" href="http://news.techmeme.com/090128/twitter-tips" target="_blank"><sup>?</sup></a>
</p>
</div>

If you want to use it, just copy and paste it into the bottom of your blog posts (make sure you’re editing in HTML mode). You can change the size and font of the text  by editing <p style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small"> (for example, try font-family: serif or font-size: medium). You can also change the size of the Techmeme favicon by switching out techmemechicklet_16.png for techmemechicklet_24.png (24px) or techmemechicklet_32.png (32px).

Lord knows it’s *ugly* (both the code and the design). So, real developers and designers I invite you to please improve upon it. All I ask is for you to post a link to your better version in the comments below, so we can all use it (and I can stop using my crappy one ).

Update: This blog is hosted on WordPress.com. And I was pretty surprised when I was originally able to embed the javascript for the buttons and it didn’t get stripped out, because I thought you weren’t allowed to run any scripts on WP.com. Well, it turns out you aren’t but they just don’t check for it when you post. At some point in the last 11hrs, the javascript powering the buttons in this post got stripped out (thereby breaking them, to which Russ alerted me). To make them work again, I’ve now just hardcoded the URL’s for them. The example javascript should still work for you (as long as your blog isn’t on WP.com), and you can see the javascript version in action at the bottom of this post on my (self-hosted) personal blog.

Update 2: The post just made the front page of Techmeme thanks to a mention from Gabe and a tip from Rahmin. If that’s not meta, I don’t know what is . And, it’s super cool to get some love from Gabe — I’m a huge fan of what he and the team have done over at Techmeme.

Update 3: As my buddy Mark just figured out, even self-hosted WordPress chokes on javascript in the body of the post. The only reason I didn’t notice this on my self-hosted WP blog is because I have the (very handy) Exec-PHP plugin installed, which apparently not only executes php in your posts but also js. The elegant solution (other than you also installing Exec-PHP on your self-hosted WP blog) would be to do a php version or maybe even a WP plug-in or template tag. But, frankly I can’t be bothered . So, I might just make a bookmarklet that generates static HTML for a ‘Submit to Techmeme’ button based on whatever page you’re on, so you can copy and paste it into any post on any publishing platform that supports HTML.

Update 4: Last one, I swear! Just to say there’s now a ‘Submit to Techmeme’ button plugin for WordPress (self-hosted).

One can (and many do) spend a ridiculous amount of time and energy trying to cultivate the largest Twitter following possible, and those two posts are good starting points for anyone to whom that sounds interesting. But if you’re like me, you don’t have an infinite amount of time to spend pursuing the diminishing marginal returns of incremental followers. This post is for those of us seeking to get the most bang for our proverbial Twitter buck, the 80% of the value for 20% of the effort. Below I’ll lay out some best practices (many lifted from the above referenced posts) and tools I’ve found disproportionately useful.

Best Practices:

• Get a good username – Twitter is different from a lot of services in this area for 2 reasons: 1) usernames play a vital role in Twitter’s social interactions (as opposed to most other services where they’re basically just a login ID); and 2) they allow you to change your username at will. For example, my original Twitter username was jonathanhstrauss and when @replies came about my friends used to complain about having to type all those characters to respond to me. In order to take full advantage of the value of retweets (RTs) and @replies, try to keep your username as short and easy to spell as possible (i.e. try to avoid particularly esoteric homonym spellings). Keep in mind that many users will be typing your username into their mobile phones, and you won’t get any benefit from their RT or @reply love if they misspell it. Also, try to make your username as interesting/self-explanatory as possible. Think of it as your billboard to potential followers who may see it in a RT or @reply with no context other than that tweet — try to give them as many reasons as possible to click through and learn more about you.
• Fill in your profile page! – This is a total no-brainer. If your Twitter username is a billboard (or banner ad), think of your profile (http://twitter.com/username) as the landing page for that ad. First of all, make sure that between your username and your real name they can figure out who you are, and put the most informative URL possible in as your website. My opinion on the Bio field is that witty and interesting is more valuable than informative (how informative can you really be in 160 characters). Think of the Bio as a way to convey your personality (or brand identity) in haiku. Upload a profile picture of a decent size, Twitter allows people to click through the thumbnail to see a larger version which is another great (and very powerful) opportunity to express your personality/brand identity. Tweak your design a little bit, even if it’s just choosing one of the pre-made themes. I’m not saying you need to create a custom background (though some are pretty cool), but just spend a few minutes messing around with the colors to get a visual vibe that matches your personality/brand (also, never underestimate the subconscious impact of just having a page that is visually different from everyone else’s — it will help you stand out, literally).
• Check your @replies – Another no-brainer complicated by Twitter’s UI design. A surprising number of people are unaware that you can click the @Replies tab right below Home (or go to http://twitter.com/replies) to see all the public messages written to you (i.e. starting with @your_username) even if you don’t follow their senders. These people are *talking to you*, you should at least listen to what they’re saying and maybe even talk back.
• Find your niche – While the best chance to get “viral” exposure is to have the users with the most followers mention your username in one of their tweets (generally as a RT or @reply), it’s only as good as the probability they’ll actually do so. For example, I could spend an hour trying to get Robert Scoble to mention me to his 52,000+ followers, which isn’t particularly likely to happen, or I could spend that same hour trying to engage people in my area of interest/expertise, and thus much more likely to respond, who have several hundred followers. To find these topical conversations you can use http://search.twitter.com to look for terms related to your interests, or seek out vertical-specific tools and communities (like StockTwits for finance). You can also browse people asking for help on LazyTweet (or by searching for ‘lazyweb’ on Twitter Search), answering questions in your area of expertise is a great way to build a *relevant* follower base.  
• Pimp it hard – Advertise that you’re on Twitter on all your other profiles across the web. The people who know you are most likely to follow you, and a lot more people than you’d expect are on Twitter nowadays. Arguably, the value of an engaged Twitter follower is high enough to justify a pretty high theoretical CPM when you’re thinking about how prominently to feature your Twitter badge on your site. There’s also a Twitter Facebook App you can add to your profile or Page (though it currently only supports one Twitter account per Facebook user, so you can’t do both) that will display your latest tweet in a box on your page. It also has an option to post your latest tweet as your Facebook status, this is *not* recommended for people who tweet more than once an hour — it will piss your Facebook friends off something fierce.

Tools:

• BrightKit – Is a great tool for anyone who has a personal Twitter account and one or more work ones (e.g. in addition to @jhstrauss, I also manage @snowballyeti and @awesm). Not only does BrightKit give you a single login from which you can send tweets and view @replies, but it also allows you to schedule tweets to be sent at a specified time in the future. While they do offer a proprietary URL shortener (ow.ly) integrated in their post UI, I recommend making the extra effort to use bit.ly (see below).
• bit.ly – When you’re limited to 140 characters, each one counts. So, URL shorteners (like TinyURL) are especially valuable to anyone who shares links on Twitter. Bit.ly is a URL shortener with statistics, which enables you to check how many people actually clicked on that link you tweeted yesterday. Make sure to register so you get unique bit.ly URLs (logged-out users all get the same bit.ly URL for a given destination URL, making stats meaningless) and can save all the pages you shorten. And as a bonus, you can integrate with multiple Twitter accounts to tweet straight from bit.ly (though you can only tweet to one account at a time).
• TwitterFeed – I love TwitterFeed because of how simple in purpose and extensible it is. You basically just give it an RSS feed to monitor and a Twitter account to which to tweet new feed items. But, it also offers every option I’ve ever wanted — from which items to tweet (based on filters) to frequency of tweets to what they should say to what URL shortener to use (and it now supports bit.ly login so I can track my TwitterFeed URLs through my bit.ly account ). The one major drawback of this service is its reliance on OpenID — trying to sign-up/in is not for the faint of heart. But once you’re in, it’s totally worth it.
• switchAbit – Like TwitterFeed, but more generalized (and without the pain in the ass of OpenID). SwitchAbit supports 9 services (including Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, and Flickr) as well as RSS feeds as both sources and destinations. It gives you a cool UI for building ‘switches’ to route content between sources and destinations and supports multiple sources and destinations per switch. It also handles keyword based filters (though it’s impossible to find in the UI) and uses bit.ly as the default URL shortener (but you can’t associate it with your bit.ly account for tracking). The main reason I prefer TwitterFeed over switchAbit for Twitter is that switchAbit gives you no ability to configure the content of the resulting tweets. But if you’re trying to route content to several destinations, switchAbit is a solid solution.
• SocialToo – I know this app is supposed to have more features, but all I use it for is to auto-follow Twitter users who follow my work accounts. Other than posting tweets or viewing @replies (both covered by BrightKit above) the only remaining reason I need to login to Twitter is to follow people. While it’s good practice, even for a brand account, to regularly find relevant users to follow (see Find your niche above), you don’t always want to wait that long to follow back people who just followed you. SocialToo solves that issue without me needing to log-in to a different Twitter account every time I get a follow notification email. It also tracks who unfollows you and provides a daily email digest of follow and unfollow actions including your last tweet before that action.
• TwitterCounter – While I’m not a big believer in Twitter follower stats (I’m much more interested in seeing measurement of meaningful actions, like clicks on bit.ly URLs I tweet), TwitterCounter seems like the most straightforward and useful solution for those who want to track such things over time. IMHO, the riot of Twitter rank and influence apps out there are nothing more than viral gimmicks. Knowing how influential I am on Twitter relative to Jeremiah Owyang is worthless to me since no one can quantify the value of my Twitter influence or his.
• Zentact – This last one is kind of an outlier because it’s not a Twitter tool per se, but a networking tool that uses Twitter as a communications channel (the other is email). Ironically, I think it is also the tool with the most potential to create value for you on Twitter. Zentact aims to strengthen your connections by alerting you to content of mutual interest to you and people in your address book. It then allows you to reach out to those contacts by sharing that interesting web page with them via email or Twitter. These are exactly the type of tweets that build a strong base of *relevant* followers (see Find your niche above), which is the most difficult and crucial part of growing your influence on Twitter. Zentact is currently in private beta, but I’ll get you an invite if you ask for one in the comments.

The most important thing to remember is that Twitter (like all social media) is a conversation, and no tools or best practices are going to change that. You must understand (and respect) the fundamental dynamics of the system before any of what we just covered will do you any real good. Deb Schultz has a great quote to help illustrate where the line should be drawn for marketing in social media: ”if you are invited to a dinner party and you show up and start selling Tupperware, there is a good chance you will not be invited back.” I couldn’t agree more, but the converse is also true — if you’re a great conversationalist, you’ll not only get invited to the host’s next dinner party but maybe some of the guests’ too. Treat Twitter like a dinner party, and you’ll do just fine (with or without everything else above).

Update: I just wrote a post on my personal blog called A Twitter Marketing Success Story about a great experience I had as the target of marketers on Twitter. I highly recommend it as an example of how to use Twitter as a marketing tool for good