Tweeting, Part 2

We had a major Twitter event last night at our house. My oldest daughter and I were watching TV with laptops going (my idea of multi-tasking) talking about Twitter. She had dabbled in Twitter some, but really hadn't explored the uses and wasn't following anybody.

Needless to say, I started expounding on my fascination with Twitter and wondering how to help others understand its uses. So...we got on Twitter and started looking at what other people were doing. We looked at sites that tell how many people are following celebs and what their tweets looked like. Then, I got academic...

Harvard Business Review just finished some research on Twitter in May and found out that "Twitter's usage patterns are very different from a typical on-line social network. A typical Twitter user contributes very rarely. Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one." (http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/06/new_twitter_research_men_follo.html)

What they found was that a lot of people are following and a smaller percentage are actually tweeting: "At the same time there is a small contingent of users who are very active. Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets." So, maybe Twitter isn't the interactive medium we thought it was, or maybe listening is as important as talking. Hmm. So do conversations have to be two-way to be effective?

Back to the living room. After looking around a little, my daughter decided to venture out into the following of celebs. At my suggestion, she began by following ESPN's PTI show. No sooner had she clicked the "follow" button than her twitter feed box was congested with tweets from PTI. To which she tweeted back to the show: " am considering un-following @PTIShow because I don't have time to read all their tweets *and* have a life... I'm twitter-sated..." Actually, I thought the use of "twitter-sated" was quite creative--chip off the old block. Within 30 seconds, she had a direct reply from PTI--something to the effect of, "we'll try and take it easy on you."

She was hooked. I saw in a moment of time what makes this medium so addictive--someone sitting at a desk at ESPN tweeted her back with a personal message. She was important to ESPN in a tangible way. Another amazing thing happened: within about two minutes, several people were following her including Tony Reali, the show's "stat boy", the sportsgeeks, and several people she wasn't sure about...Up to that point, I think she had tweeted four times since she opened the account months ago. Since last night, she has tweeted four more times. Doubled her production in a 12-hour period.

Watching this whole exchange helped me realize why this media is so viral. Yeah, there are a bunch of people (over 50% according to some research) that sign up for an account and abandon it within six months, but that other 50%--that's the group we should be thinking about. For a look at some of Twitter's recent numbers, check out mashable.com, a website on social media. Here's a link to the recent Twitter numbers: http://mashable.com/2009/06/09/web-in-numbers-may/

Happy tweeting...

Do You Have Tweeps?

Twitter---what to do with it? It's sort of like family--can't live with it and evidently, can't live without it. But what do sports information directors do with Twitter?

Looking around the web, there seems to be many applications for Twitter--the biggest is using it as a broadcast tool to run all your news story URLs on. I looked at the University of Hawaii feed (mostly because I like their website design) and noticed they use it as a news feed/promotion announcement page. Nothing wrong with that necessarily. I think most of us are looking at that as sort of the default application for now. But if social media is all about connecting and starting conversations, will this use ultimately cut it with the Twitter community? I don't think so...

I watched most of the college world series recently and was fascinated by the media's fascination with Les Miles on Twitter in the stands. So, I took a look at his twitter feed during the game just to see what all the hubbub was about. Now that, I think, is what Twitter is all about. Granted, I'm not totally enamored with the fact that he just touched down in an airplane at Omaha, but his posts are more what Twitter is all about--useless personal information about what is going on right now. And isn't that what tweeps want to know--what is going on right now? I loved some of his "coaching" posts--"bats have to come alive! Geaux Tigers."

He has over 10,000 followers on Twitter. "Ten thousand people get to touch Les Miles," as one of my friends called it. A personal connection. Here is a great example of how somebody took a social media application and used it well. And there are many more out there. Witness the Shaq twitter--and even Oprah's on Twitter now.

Twitter, like Facebook and every other social site, is useful. But, it really can become a powerful force if it's used well. So, are there any Twitter rules out there?

First, if you're not familiar with Twitter, join and follow some feeds. I follow PTI (ESPN talking heads) because I love the show and think Kornheiser is funny. I used to have them sent to my phone but they started tweeting so much the vibrating got annoying. Now I follow them on my twitter page. I also follow the New York Times news feed just to complement my RSS page.

Follow some big names for a while just to see what they're doing. Follow a few college sports feeds: here's a list of head football coaches that are tweeting: http://www.fanblogs.com/ncaa/008101.php. These feeds tend (I'll use the verb loosely) to be more personal and less "news-oriented." You can add a couple celebs (The_Real_Shaq is one of my faves--he uses Twitter well). Just get out there and look and I think the ideas will come.

Second, read up on social media. One of the bloggers I follow is Kami Huyse. She has a blog called Communications Overtones (http://overtonecomm.blogspot.com/) that talks about all things related to social media. I also noticed the other day there is now a Dummies book out about Twitter. I guess that would answer some basic questions. If you don't have time to read the whole book, I would suggest googling info on Twitter. Pretty soon, you'll be tweeting to your tweeps.

I think we have to join in--just do it thoughtfully. Are you using it? If so, how is it working for you?

Will it Blend?

Ever heard of Tom Dickson? He is the CEO of a company called Blendtec--the makers of a high end blender costing just under $400. More importantly, he is the unpretentious star of a bunch of videos on YouTube. Shortly after Blendtec's famous video of Dickson blending an IPhone in one of their blenders and reducing it to dust ("ISmoke" as Dickson called it), Dickson appeared on VH1, The Today Show, and the Tonight Show to reproduce the feat. Pretty soon, 60 million people had seen the video on YouTube. To top it off, the guy is pretty funny in sort of a dry, "Andy-Rooney" type way.



Dickson's marketing guy, George Wright, had no background in consumer marketing or video before he joined the company. He just walked in on some techs testing a blender one day by chewing up pieces of two-by-two lumber to test the blender out and thought, "people should see this!" A grand total of $50 later, they had their first video up on YouTube and a link on Digg, a website that indexes popular content on the web.



Blendtec's sales rose 20% following that first fray. Now, willitblend.com has made a name for itself as an online community featuring videos of Blendtec's CEO chewing up cameras, snow skis, the federal stimulus bill and other stuff using pop culture events as their backdrop.

So what am I thinking? First, you can teach an old dog new tricks. Or an old SID...

Blendtec took an idea--one that was generated by a regular employee (not a consultant), and used new media to make it fly. You can get a Flip camera for $150 and an a channel on YouTube for free. The viral potential of YouTube is there, but you need to be creative. Check and see what others are doing...

Here is a video on YouTube of two Penn State basketball players spoofing the popular MTV Cribs and the show "Pimp My Ride"--their version is "Pimp my Dorm Room" where they turn a student's dorm room into a Lion hangout. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zYo_eSDllc. Obviously there was some cost in this one, but you get the idea.

I cannot fear creativity (it's becoming a mantra, folks). Also, there is no shame in copying ideas, even though the really good ones seem to be original. How does this all relate to SIDs? I'm convinced that we are the future of using new media to promote our sports programs as the traditional avenues shrink. Newspaper readership is down, traditional radio is being replaced by streaming. According to Wikipedia, Facebook now has over 200 million users. A year ago, almost 140 million viewers a month were on YouTube--now it is even more. Almost half of the adults in this country use social media (according to Charlene Li's Groundswell) and the percentage is even higher in the younger demographic. Can we afford NOT to become users of the new media? Well, I guess it's time to learn some new tricks...