But Twitter’s business model is one in which it is basically just a database, rather than a website portal for information.  Many of us never go to Twitter.com.  And it would be interesting to know how many people actually use third party tools for all of their accessing of Twitter.  In my case, I do all of my work in HootSuite and other apps that just access Twitter feeds.

So, how long before Twitter advertisers figure this out?

Not only are these ads on a page that probably doesn’t get viewed much, but also, their static position at the bottom of the page will probably create a Twitter ad avoidance area (ad avoidance being the area of web pages that users learn to avoid once they become established as advertising areas).

For those of you that haven’t seen the ads yet, I have highlighted one in yellow below:

Not that I am baiting Twitter to start throwing these ads directly into your thread, but I really think its the only way they will be able to show value to their advertisers.  In adding ads to your thread, they force you to have to look through legitimate posts and figure out which ones are ads…thus reducing avoidance and issues with people not going to the Twitter website  But I think they are worried that doing this will upset the apple cart all together and that people will see Twitter as a spam engine…thus causing some people to give up on the medium.

I truly believe making revenue will continue to be the biggest issue facing the social media giants for the next couple of years.

For the advertiser though, in this case (using Twitterspeak), I’d say #adfail.

An excellent idea and a good use of social media marketing, right? Well, in theory, but the execution changed a happy customer into a frustrated one.

Here’s what happened:

The first thing I did was follow the link in Twitter.  Success, I was at the vendor’s forum page and all I had to do was post my response.

But then the trouble began.  Immediately I was sent to a log-in page.  I must admit, I have been with this vendor for six years but haven’t once logged into their forum…and good luck finding my introductory email from way back then.

So I had to go recover my username and password.  Easy enough, right?

Wrong. I spent a good 10 minutes typing in multiple Captcha phrases (which for those of you who don’t like puzzles, they are a nightmare) and it kept kicking me back out saying I had typed it wrong. I finally gave up and tweeted back that I was frustrated and needed a different way to post my suggestion for the contest.

Good will, suddenly turned bad…and a satisfied customer becoming frustrated by a company that was just trying to enhance their reputation.

I know the world of spam has caused site owners nightmares.  I have been there.  I’ve had both forums and blogs overrun with junk from spammers, so I can sympathize with the method my vendor is using.  But I doubt the average visitor to a site has the same patience and understanding.

I removed Captcha from my own site because all it does is make things harder on my viewer.  We went to putting math problems that are very simple, but seem to do better against spammers.  But an even better suggestion might be to make Facebook Connect available.  Any way you can make signing in a “click” instead of a mad search for a login or going through a forget password email procedure will help your viewers.

Don’t blow a great social marketing idea by having your website frustrate customers.  Think of them first and they will appreciate you for it.

By the way, I never heard back on my Twitter post…another #fail for a tech vendor that should know better.

With 45 minutes to kill before the mall opened, I started browsing the business book section and found one that I was interested in. I started looking through the first couple of pages and realized that I was getting interested in the book. I decided to walk over an isle or two to see if I could find a comfy chair to dig in a little deeper. To my disappointment, all of the soft chairs that formerly littered the store were gone (apparently with the remodel).

I understand that there are customers that may use these chairs to turn Barnes & Noble into a reading library, where no purchase is made. But I would venture to say, there are more customers like me who sometimes like to get a little more into the book before making a decision (if you haven’t noticed, its hard to find a hardback book under $29.99), and I have always valued Barnes and Noble letting me do this…which has made it my loyal spot for purchasing books.

Now, you might say…well just go in the Cafe and enjoy your book there.  Getting beyond the hard back chair (which some marketing genius probably determined were so uncomfortable that it sped up the purchase rate and decreased loitering), there is a bigger story to tell…whether this was to give customers more selection or to curb loitering behavior in the store, it actually punishes the larger segment of customers who are truly loyal and will pay a higher price to get this book in a store. And it takes away the uniqueness that made Barnes and Noble a very successful chain of brick and mortar stores, in the age of Amazon.com.

It makes me wonder what they are thinking; especially when customers are moving to downloaded books (which Barnes and Noble is promoting with Nook) and reading blogs instead of buying books and magazines, this move away from customer pleasure to cold stacking of shelves seems self-destructive.

I hope customers rise up against this when they see it. I hope they trumpet it online so much that Barnes and Noble can’t ignore it. Not in the hopes of bringing down the bookseller. Absolutely not! We love Barnes and Noble. But instead, to exert effort in getting them to focus on customers over profits. That communication and feedback is what social media is all about…and in this new social marketing paradigm, those that listen to their customers will profit. Those that don’t risk not only profit, but reputation and existence.

So my message is, when creating a unique customer-centric brand, don’t remove the chairs.  There are too many available ways for customers to tear down your reputation through online feedback.  And if you do make a mistake, own up to it and fix it fast.  Fair or not, loyal customers will turn on you quick if they feel you aren’t being loyal to your brand. And as all marketers know,  loyal customers are the bread and butter of almost any business.

Thanks to Google, “beta” has evolved into an invitation only club and proving ground for online software. It has worked well in some cases for Google (Gmail) and bad in others (Wave, Buzz).

Other companies have been quick to adopt versions of this style, with some modification.  Two recent examples are RockMelt and LiveFyre.

RockMelt is a social media browser that hit the market like a storm a couple weeks ago through building a community of beta users and allowing them to recommend the product to other beta users.  By all accounts, the success in the first week was phenomenal.

LiveFyre, on the other hand, is blog plug-in software that makes commenting on blogs simpler and actually entices users to do so. From a user’s standpoint it is an incredible tool and one in which the blogging community has desperately needed to inspire feedback.

But LiveFyre has apparently decided to go Google’s route of sending out invitations when they can get to them or when server capacity can handle them; and to this blogger, it feels like they aren’t prepared for the boom that RockMelt received in its beta launch.

Its sad because, as with RockMelt and Wave, I was very excited to be an early adopter and evangelist for LiveFyre.  It has actually energized me about blogging again and as our company sells our clients on the value of blogs, I feel its critical to have access to this potentially revolutionary application.

But instead, I wait and feel left out in the cold.  And while some companies probably think slow invitation beta just build excitement, it also builds expectation…so if the product is not up the hype when finally received by the potential evangelist, it dies on the vine (as Google Wave did).

I think RockMelt avoided this letdown because within a week of being energized by the idea, I was actually using RockMelt via an invitation sent by a friend (which also promotes community, and in which I thought was genius viral marketing). And while the product was not quite as good as I’d like, I am much more forgiving in dealing with the flaws and the discussion of future improvements. Its still loaded on my machine and I continue to find ways to integrate it into my business day.  With Wave and Buzz, I tried them, was confused or underwhelmed after being built up and never went back.

So I hope LiveFyre speeds up their process for beta testers and realizes, just because you have a better idea (see BetaMax video and AM stereo), it doesn’t mean it is a natural win.  You have to build excitement, but customers want simple and easy-to-use, innovative products with limited obstacles to a happy experience.

I am looking to launch my improved and simplified blog for the new year, my LiveFyre invitation is 3 weeks delayed and I’m still waiting…I hope not too much longer.   By the way, I highly encourage someone at LiveFyre to comment on my blog, so they can see why I am eagerly waiting their response.

And looking at the statistics for bit.ly isn’t much help, because bit.ly uses the same URL for others as well and counts them as the same.

I tried an experiment, using Twitterfeed.com and my WordPress blog. I placed the italic code into my feed link…then provided this as my feed link for Twitter to Twitterfeed.com:

http://www.hannush.com/blog/feed/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=twitterfeed.com&utm_campaign=Social+Media?rss

That did not work.

I post using TweetDeck mostly…and it adds in a URL shortener automatically, but doesn’t track automatically.

So, it looks like I will continue to manually make my links.  At least there is one URL shortening company that lets you add the tracking for Twitter as part of making the link.  Check it out: http://kl.am (click “kustomize” to get it to work).

Also, there are some more difficult ways to achieve it:

RavenSEOtools.com

Avengate Blog

Yoast

But I will warn you, these are not for the faint of heart. They require server access and a little HTML.

Twitterfeed.com says it has UTM code, but I haven’t seen it yet.  I’ll keep looking, because while its nice to get the extra traffic, it would be nice to measure it.

If you know of any simple methods for getting this tracking into Google Analytics, I’d love to hear it

There are a couple of strategies to using Twitter. You can take the celebrity / large business direction where you don’t follow anyone unless you are an advocate of their product or cause…or you can take the friendly direction (or for some the spike marketing route) and follow anyone that follows you.  But is that dangerous to your business’ reputation?

Lets say you are a Bible salesperson and someone from the Anton Lavey fan club follows you. Do you follow them back?  Extreme example, I know, but its to get the brain cells moving on etiquette versus protecting your reputation.  What strategy will you (or do you) employ?

All I wanted to do was have Facebook automatically import posts from my blog. At first, I thought this was going to be easy.  I found the instructions on this site but I ran into some problems.  The Facebook page I want the updates to go onto is a Business page (Fan Page), so the “Notes” technique is a bit more convoluted.  Then, it posts the items to your Notes in Facebook rather than pointing you to your blog pages.  Not what I’m trying to do.

So after much labor and searching, I found a Facebook application called RSS Graffiti. Very nice!  Although there seem to be a million steps in getting it working the way you want it to.  Here is what I did to get it working (it does exactly what I’m looking for):

STEP ONE

Go to your fan page (or business page) and click “Edit Page” under your photo.

STEP TWO

At the bottom of the page choose “More Applications” by clicking Browse More.

STEP THREE

Type “rss graffiti” in the search box on the top left of Facebook.

STEP FOUR

Choose RSS Graffiti from the search results.

STEP FIVE

Click the “Go to Application” button under the logo on the left.

STEP SIX

Click the blue button to Authorize access to Facebook for the application.

STEP SEVEN

Click “Allow” to let RSS Graffiti access (I know, this will happen a few more times!)

STEP EIGHT

It is subtle, but choose your fan page, not your main profile to authorize…it will appear in the left hand part of the application.  Here it is shown as Hannush Web Design under “Your Fan Page”…you can do your regular profile too if you’d like.

STEP NINE

Add RSS Graffiti to Hannush Web Design? Sure, why not.

STEP TEN

Allow publishing to your profile (yes again!)

STEP ELEVEN

Believe it or not, one more “Allow Publishing” (and you thought I was kidding…you can’t make a mistake in judgment here)

STEP TWELVE

Click the + Add Feed button.

STEP THIRTEEN

Now, preview your blog post and then choose a style for the  post.  You can make it beautiful with pic and everything, or you can make it compact, like a Tweet.  Then…

On that same form, you can also choose how your title is presented.

THAT IS IT! They definitely could streamline this process.

Now write a blog post and watch the magic!  If you’d like to also have Facebook send this to your Twitter account…use these simple instructions to sync up these two Social Media programs.  Now, one blog post goes 3 places.  You’re definitely covered.

While the SEO and Social Media community wrestles over this new innovation, we have had a few brainstorms of our own.  One of the most compelling is to promote your customers and vendors.

As a web designer and Internet marketing agency, it is in our and our customer’s best interest to promote our relationship and the successes we achieve.  In addition, creating a referral network of trusted and recommended vendors is advantageous to all involved.

Twitter Lists allow you to create special categories of tweets and tweeters that are defined as their own individual URL’s.  For example:

http://twitter.com/hannush/customers

On this list we are displaying our customers tweets.  In doing this, we create a value add for our clients and we give our potential customers a chance to see how we promote our current client base.  It also gives them a sense that we are involved in out-of-the-box thinking on social media.

Imagine too if your business creates a trusted vendors list.  What a great, but subtle way to promote those that help your business succeed.

To me, Twitter Lists are an unintended first step away from the narcissistic “all about me” flavor of Twitter accounts.  It creates a value for the medium, which is something that has been sorely lacking for small businesses interested in Twitter.

We’d love to hear your comments on the use of Twitter Lists.  Or talk with us today about how social media can build your brand.