But I digress.  Look for that series in a few days.

This my friends is about Twitter and a mini-rant I’m having in three acts:

Twitter is key for small businesses.   There are many many articles about why.  I can sum them all up in a sentence.  There is no better tool for the money, for promoting and spreading information about your services, products and business. Sure there are tons of people on there talking about what book they read, what they had for lunch but that’s just part of conversation.  It can’t all be strategy and roses, in between there you have life and fluffle.  (I made that word up).    Here comes the rant part:

1.  Act One

• If someone friends you, read some of their tweets and if it’s not spam/porn/evil – friend them back.   Not everyone you talk to is going to be your best friend but you might just end up having an interesting conversation, learning something or even make an impression.   Nothing makes me crazier than going through my friends and pruning out people (which you have to do from time to time) – and finding a “social network EXPERT” (emphasis mine), small business, restaurant or digital consultant that hasn’t friended back.   What a waste of a connection.
• Take into account there are some Internet Superstars that just can’t follow the thousands and thousands of people back.  I tend to follow them even if they don’t follow me because I’m interested.  And that’s the only way I’ll do that.  I don’t care if you think you are an Internet Superstar and I’m not interested in what you are saying, I will unfollow.  To me – I take the saying of Mark Davidson to heart – Twitter is about a conversation.  If you won’t even allow the possibility, forget it!  UNFOLLOW, UNFOLLOW, UNFOLLOW.
• Also you do have to prune and check your ratios.  Because there people who will follow you wait X amount of time, whether that’s a minute or a week or a month, after you follow them back, and then unfollow you.  It’s a scam to get more followers.  What they want to do with these minions, I’m not sure, but I don’t want to be a part of the shuffling masses.

2.  Act Two

• Don’t have every tweet be a key message or even worse quote someone else. Talk about things.  I don’t want to get to know your key selling proposition, or what Einstein said.  I can read that or learn that myself.  I want to learn about you, your business, your thoughts – those are the things that provide value to me.   I think that personality is key.  Because I’m not doing business with a faceless droid, even at large corporations, I do business with people.  Case in point – I have been with Allstate Insurance forever.  And not because of Allstate or their commercials.  I do it because the Agent I’m with listened to me when I was a whippersnapper driver and he knows me and HE cares.  I can’t tell you have many entertaining conversations we have had which usually end with him saying – call me back if you want to file this claim otherwise BYE!   He is Allstate to me.

3.  Act Three

• Don’t jump on every bandwagon that blows through Twitter. This is the generating rant that brought this post to your eyeballs.  There has been Twitter Spam in the last week which is annoying.  But what is making me crazy right now is the direct message – “I just gave you “love bug hug”! Check it out:” and the “do you want 100000 followers, click here.”   I’m in the process right now of blocking and reporting a huge number of these.  ARGH!
• That being said, there was a recent bandwagon to help the Iranian people and their election.   Every now and then it isn’t all horrible.  I’m just saying, be careful out there kids – not every tool, not every trend, not every shortcut leads you to Oz.

And as always, I value your feedback.  What bugs you about Twitter?  What have you found useful?  Do tell.

• Was a web master for many years and had vendors bid on work.  This was mid-nineties and there wasn’t open source versus proprietary yet.  There was code which was, let’s be honest pretty basic and there weren’t many tools yet.
• As the internet and more specifically the visual part, the world wide web, developed little animated gifs weren’t cutting it.  We as consumers of information, wanted more.  Tools started being developed both in creating code (Front Page, Cold Fusion, etc…), hosting the code through PC servers or Unix servers and how to serve that information out via browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape and eventually Firefox etc…).  *this is vastly over-simplified*
• As these things developed you had roughly two communities break out.  The proprietary or closed code (Microsoft, Cold Fusion) and Open Source which was lead primarily by the Unix/Linux community.  Each community proceeded to move forward in separate (seeming) directions.
• About this time, I went out on my own in 2000 and started The Satori Group.  When I worked in-house I used vendors that tended toward open source.   It was my opinion, just my opinion, that the Microsoft-based tools and other tools we saw looked templated and each one was based on a system.  You could make changes but you had to dig in and know the system and what strings you pulled would make the marionette/web site dance.
• It might not the best answer but it is what it is, we preferred open source because it tended to be cheaper and we could customize it.  When we were given the clunky Microsoft tools we had to buy licenses’ and learn their systems.  Which worked well when you were an IT manager and already had the licenses and knew their systems and it was a simple add-on and *shazam* you had a web site.   Less so, when you are a start-up and need to have product to sell that you can create without major cash outlay before you ever see a result.
• Thus two communities were born.  Open Source and Closed or Proprietary systems.   I have simplified this to the point it’s missing lots of information but you get the idea.

As my company evolved, open-source evolved.  There are huge communities of code and servers and browsers and while closed-source tools like browser Internet Explorer still exist, open source is not the “crazy” idea people thought it once was.  Especially as people that “came” up in this era evolve into managers, owners of companies, security gets better, tools easier to use, functionality grows and the cost still stays reasonable to people who need the services.

And I promise you this is not a dis on Microsoft or any of the closed-source systems out there.  I am explaining this because as the company has changed over the years from primarily a provider of  design and development for web sites to interactive marketing firm, I think the web site is just the beginning.  It doesn’t stop with the site, it begins with the site.

Because once you have a web site no matter what it was built with or hosted on or what browser you use, people need to find your web site.  And just as code was evolving over the years, the way you found out about web sites was evolving.  Suddenly search engines became the tail that wagged the dog because who cares if you have a great site if no-one can find you.  So finding out how to make your site easier to find, what made it come up in search for what terms and being able to understand this system was and is crucial.

Now the cycle has turned again.  It’s not just about finding the site, it’s about hearing what people are saying, connecting with your users, creating and maintaining a presence online.  And while there are tools, there is no way to fake a connection.  You either are in or you are out.   We call it Social Media Marketing or I use the term Community-Based Marketing because it has less of a cutesy sound and is more realistic to the benefit.

I am going to have a few posts coming out to further this discussion:

• What is Community-Based Marketing in relation to Social Media Marketing
• Step-by -Step Instructions on Bootstrapping a Interactive Campaign for Small Businesses
  • Definitions and details on starting
  • Tools open and closed-source
  • Instructions on how to do everything
  • Q/A and Case study
• Guest Bloggers.  I know lots of incredibly talented programmers, front-end developers, social media gurus, sales people, designers, interactive producers and I want them to get exposure for their abilities.

So I appreciate you reading and let me know what your thoughts are.  I’m still getting used to writing things I normally put in a proposal or I discuss with clients.  Bear with me while we get organized and if you have comments leave them !