Like blogs, Twitter has almost become a staple comms. tool for brands. But before jumping into the world of micro-blogging make sure your company can answer the following questions:

1. What will your Twitter username be? Make sure it’s short, snappy and relevant. Use the company name if possible so fellow tweeters can find your easily
2. Who will be responsible for updating the feed? Will it be a single person, a team of people – how much time will you allocate to Twitter each week? If it’s not enough you won’t get out of the starting block.
3. What is the purpose of your Twitter account? Is it a news feed, customer support channel, lead generator, personality-builder, media engagement tool, event promotion, competition promotion, internal communications or simply amplifying another Twitter feed? Make sure your tweets serve a purpose.
4. What is your follower strategy?  How will you decide who to follow and who does the following?
5. Who are you targeting with Twitter? Journalists, industry influencers, customers, competitors, celebrities, staff? There are numerous audiences on Twitter but make sure your tweets aren’t being lost in space – make them targeting and attract the people you want to speak to.
6. What is your response strategy? What do you do if someone sends a reply or DM to you? Is it an instant response, do you have a 24 response time? Who manages the replies?
7. What is the expected life-span of your Twitter feed? Is this something that will live for 6 months or indefinitely. Ask the question, if the answer is less than 3 months then Twitter probably isn’t the way forward for your brand.
8. How will you integrate your Twitter feed across your other social platforms? LinkedIn, Facebook, Foursquare – they all allow you to further spread your tweets amongst your target audience.
9. How will you measure the success of your Twitter feed? Be accountable, will you measure the number of followers you have, the number of leads you have generated or the amount of conversation created. Have a goal and you’ll find it easier to find success on Twitter.

Creating a Twitter account isn’t rocket-science but having an effective and useful Twitter feed isn’t easy. Only by questioning the role that micro-blogging will have for your brand and dedicating focused resource towards the platform will you ensure Twitter becomes an invaluable tool for your company, your employees and your customers.

Today I became the Mayor of Hill & Knowlton. This honour unfortunately comes with no real benefits but at least it is a small claim to fame I can lord over my colleagues from time to time.

I have been using Foursquare for over a week now and one thing I will say for it is that it’s addictive. But right now, that’s all it is. Earning points and collected badges gives a sense of achievement but nothing of genuine value. That’s where Foursquare is different to Twitter – whilst Twitter is about communication, Foursquare is about reward and right now the reward is limited.

However, hopefully this is all set to change. Domino’s and Debenhams have recently announced they have agreed partnership deals with Foursquare to offer incentives to their most loyal (or most frequent) customers – and this is where Foursquare will come into its own. For bricks & mortar brands, Foursquare provides and engaging platform to attract and reward their customers, the greater the reward the more incentive there is for consumers to use Foursquare and visit their local pizzeria or fashion retailer.

Here are 5 ways brands can utilise Foursquare:

1. Mayor Incentives: On Foursquare if you visit a venue more than anyone else you can be crowned the Mayor of that venue. This achievement could come with perks such as discounts, freebies and premium access to new products, initiatives or offers e.g. The Mayor of Hill & Knowlton should receive half price beer in the bar.
2. Brand Badges: As you use Foursquare you collect badges – I earned the Bender badge (I know, I know) today for checking-in four nights in a row. Why not have a Fast Foodie badge sponsored by McDonalds, or a Fitness Freak badge sponsored by Virgin Gyms?
3. Offer Alerts: Using Foursquare, brands could easily identify people in the area that might be interested in special offers and new launches e.g. a bar in Clapham could message everyone that tends to go out in the area with a Happy Hour notice.
4. Collect User Feedback: When you check into a venue you are invited to leave a tip which is shared with other users who check into the same place e.g. Claire at Fitness First is the best personal trainer in Putney; or try the Pad Thai at Banana Leaf. Brands could collect this feedback to make tweaks to their service. Any complaints about a dish? Take it off the menu.
5. Target Do’ers: You can create To Do lists on Foursquare that list places you want to visit. If the London Eye could see that someone had them on their To Do list, why not get in touch and offer them a 2-for-1 deal? At the minute this would be fairly limited as the number of people on the site doesn’t make it off genuine value but I expect to see this become more relevant over the next 6 months

I’m sure there are marketers across the globe plotting how best to exploit the rise in popularity of Foursquare, which is great, but only if it plays to the core of what the platform offers, which is reward. Reward your customers and they will flock.

We all fall off the Twitter bandwagon at times. I’m as guilty as anyone else of leaving my account to gather dust whilst real-world issues take priority. So I thought it would be interesting to look at whether the influx of celebrities on Twitter were doing the same – which of them just got caught up in the hype but then realised a million Twitter followers didn’t equal a new film role, book deal or album launch.

On 2nd Feb 2009, The Times published its list of the 50 most popular Twitter celebrities. Here’s who has dropped off the Twitter radar…

12. Dave Matthews (Musician)
Last tweet: 20th October 2009
Followers: 822,665

“Its my favorite rock record my favorite country record. I can’t stop listening. Get a song for free @ http://dannybarnes.com.”

28. Luke Wilson (Actor)
Account no longer active

36. Michael Phelps (Swimmer)
Account suspended due to strange activity (was Mike Tweeting whilst high?)

40. Rachel Bilson (Actress)
Not a peep – an account but no tweets. Bad form!

43. Eli Manning (American football player)
Account turned out to be pure fakery. There is an Eli news feed though

44. Regina Spektor (Musician)
Another celeb with a Twitter imposter. More of a MySpace girl.

45. George Lucas (Director)
Are there any real celebs on Twitter? The tweeting Star Wars director wasn’t in fact the actual Star Wars director.
And that’s it! Out of 50 celebrities included on the original list, only three have stopped using Twitter – the rest turned out to be fakes so can’t be put to the sword.

 It would appear my cynicism is unfounded and in fact many celebrities are genuinely engaged in the whole Twitter thing, or at least their managers/publicists/sponsors are!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the second Media140 event in London. This event was focused on brands and their use of social media platforms (particular focus on Twitter) and whilst it was a good event overall, like many events of this nature, it often drifted from insightful to insufferable (and back again).

The most notable thing missing from the conference was the number of brands in attendance – both in speaker slots and the audience. Whilst the likes of BA, Virgin Trains and Red Bull made a valued and insightful contribution, the event would have benefited from more case studies and brand perspective rather than theoretical hyperbole which was, at times, all that was coming from the stage.

That said, I would still recommend attending Media140 to colleagues and fellow social media enthusiasts as between the sales pitches and agency showcasing it did spark some lively debate and offered valuable face time with an inner circle of marketing bods who are influencing the way brands use the social media space.

The highlights for me included the excellent David McCandless who received the biggest cheer of the day simply by demonstrating the power that creative imagery can have on data. An example of his work is below but I urge you to read more via his Flickr channel (and buy his book in February 2010).

Also Ciaran Norris provided some excellent case studies of brands harnessing the 2.0 world, some more successfully than others. Richard Baker, General Manager at Virgin Train made us all reflect a little and appreciate that brands can be great at Twitter if they take a down to earth attitude towards it and simply try to help people.  And finally, Ted Hunt from Innocent Drinks who not only found a suitor within the audience but managed to keep his composure throughout a particularly raucous TwitterFall to demonstrate how personality is key to social media success.

Ande, who organises the events (whilst juggling a full time job I should add), kept his cool between major wi-fi outages which frustrated those in attendance and is looking to host further Media 140 events across the globe over the coming months. I would encourage everyone, if they get the chance, to attend and find out more about how brands, marketers and the media are harnessing the connected web.

As one panel member put it quite brilliantly (and honestly) yesterday, “…at the end of the day we’re all just making it up as we go along”. We are, but with events like Media140 we can at least pretend we know what we’re doing

Last week there were two incredible lapses in judgement from brands that saw people up in arms.

Firstly, Habitat. This has been well documented and covered but to recap – Habitat’s first foray into the Twittersphere ended disastrously after some bright spark decided that leveraging key trends or hashtags on Twitter would be a great way of getting more eyeballs on their tweets.

This resulted in the likes of “#MOUSAVI Join the database for free to win a £1,000 gift card” being posted on their account.

The second, Perez Hilton (yes, he counts as a brand). Upon learning about the tragic death of Michael Jackson, Perez posted this on his popular gossip blog.

This resulted in uproar on social media channels and the #unfollowperez hashtag started doing the rounds.

Both Habitat and Perez received negative comment and coverage as a result of their exploits and both were swift to apologise and correct their errors – Habitat deleted the offending (and offensive) tweets, Perez removing the image.

What is interesting is not the consumer backlash – this is to be expected given the errors in judgement, at least by anyone with half a mind – but the immediate forgiveness shown to both parties by consumers.

Yes they are continuing to receive a small amount criticism and yes both cases may have causes irreparable damage to each brand but largely the apologies were met with general acceptance.

The point is, and this is something I reiterate whenever asked to give a client a social media workshop, brands in general are still learning how best to leverage social media channels and mistakes will be made (even really stupid ones). But, as long as you learn from those mistakes, make adjustments and improve then social media can continue to be an incredibly fun and powerful channel which should be leveraged.

Using your audience as your marketing moral compass is not a bad thing as long as you do listen and change direction when told to.

I doubt Habitat will make the same mistake again – although judging by their Twitter account they may have just given up altogether. And, whilst Perez probably lapped up the controversy it could have been much worse than it was and he’ll be sure to double check his sources before opening MS Paint again.

Five things you should check out before the week’s out:

1. Buzz and Snoop are teaming up for a rap duet. Sometimes the most unlikely partnerships can generate column inches
2. Kid reacts to his mum cancelling his World of Warcraft account. Never underestimate brand loyalty or consumer passion
3. Let it Ring! One of the most powerful and creative examples of communicating a road safety message I have ever seen. Previewed at Cannes Lions
4. Ever struggled to explain what Twitter is? The site’s co-founder Biz Stone provides an overview for @rbolivar’s Mum at Cannes Lions
5. Michael Jackson performing Man in the Mirror. A song by one of the greatest musicians of our time, in his prime

Have a great weekend.

Anyone that follows me on Twitter will know that I have just returned from the Cannes Lions Festival where Hill & Knowlton was playing host to its own seminar (the first time PR has been included in 56 years).

We decided to show off a bit so recruited Twitter co-founder Biz Stone to speak and held the festival’s first ever live tweet-up.

You can check out videos from the seminar here.

I was lucky enough to hang out with Biz who turned out to be a class act and uncovered a few interesting facts about the man that you might not know:

• He’s a strict vegan and even wears “vegetarian” shoes
• He loves portmanteaus and can come up with them in seconds
• He likes tequila…but in a connoisseur kind of way not in a “slammer” kind of way

Check out the videos above as they offer some real insight into how Twitter came about, Biz’s thoughts on why it has become such a phenomenon and what the future holds.

Enjoy!

My morning kicked off with a conversation about Twilert and in particular why the site was launched in BETA and what BETA actually means. It got me thinking about my reasoning behind it and I ended at the question of “Why would I ever take the site out of BETA?”

For me, BETA means the final version of a service or site before small tweaks are made and a final, clean version is rolled out to the masses. However, that implies that the service is perfect as doesn’t require constant TLC, tweaks and improvements and I’m yet to find a single online service that fits in the “perfect” bracket.

The point is that, as I am finding with Twilert, user interaction online now means that feedback and advice for online tools and services comes thick and fast and webmasters (for want of a better word) need to react to this feedback by incorporating it into their sites. The feedback will never stop and therefore neither should the tweaking.

BETA works for real-world things, things that can’t be upgraded or changed en-mass easily. But online, there is no such thing as BETA. Every CEO, CFO and webmaster should treat their site like it is constantly in BETA and mould their service to meet the demands of those using it. If you don’t then a competitor that does, will, and you’ll lose users overnight.

It’s been pretty quiet round these parts (again) but there is good reason. Between my day job (usually 2am – 3am) I have been working on a new Twitter application that effectively replicates the Google Alerts service but, yes you guessed it, for Twitter!

So, I proudly introduce Twilert.com to the world!

Ideal for anyone interested in following opinion or discussion on brands, products, people – anything really.

Give it a go, it’s dead easy to use and completely free. Let me know what you think.

Oh and follow us on Twitter too.

Another day another Internet meme doing the rounds.

MIchael Litman from LitmanLive and [EDIT 30/10/2008] Paul Stallard have tagged me in the Three for Three post where bloggers are encouraged to list their three choices across three categories before tagging other bloggers to continue the chain.

So, here goes…

Top three non-work websites:

• - Football365.com – The number one resource for the UK football fan. It isn’t the mecca for stats that the BBC is but its mix of irreverent comment, insight and humour makes it a winner in my book!
• - Digg.com – The ultimate time waster but an incredibly useful one. An instant snapshot of what’s hot on the web
• - TheOnion.com – Older than the WWW itself. One of the few US sites to do satire very well

Top three karaoke songs:

• - Don’t Stop Believing by Journey – “I love Journey, but I hate baseball cards”
• - We Built This City by Starship – Guarantee you’ll get groans when this first comes on but 2 minutes in you’ll have the entire bar singing it with you
• - Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi – For little over 3 minutes you honestly believe you are a rock star

Top three weekend cocktails:

• - Mojito from anywhere
• - Raspberry Collins from Lab on Old Compton Street
• - Old Fashioned from Match just off Regent Street

That’s given me a craving for a bit of Journey…”She’s just a small time girl….”

You are now tagged…

• - Gaylene Ravenscroft from Collective Conversation
• - Candace Kuss from Brand Street
• - Paul Stallard from Paul Stallard’s Technology Blog