CopyDiva

Yesterday, I coined a new term that I hope will make it into Webster’s . As is the case whenever you’ve got a technology, new terms come into play.

Twitterspam doesn’t quite cover what I mean, so, my new term is:

Micro-verbose: (adjective): 1. Tweeting repeatedly over a short period of time. 2. Tweeting sentence after sentence to complete a thought that’s much better suited for a blog post, Facebook note, or other social updating service that has no character limit; 3. Tweeting play-by-plays of sports matches, particularly soccer and hockey matches, to the sheer annoyance of the people who follow you.

How do you use, interact with, and communicate with social computing/social media tools? Lately, I have spent some time thinking about the way I use specific social computing tools and why others bore me, or why I simply have no interest in others. Certainly not a science, as these are my observations about my personal usage, but I do think that perhaps it bears some useful information, particularly about motivations, necessities, distractions, connections, and other words ending in -ion.

Blogging: Writing and Reading

The ol’ stalwart blogging. Yes, I blog, but certainly not an A-lister - more like a D-lister or lower. My blog isn’t bringing in money, nor is it set up to do that. I blog about mostly business topics that interest me. I am not really a personal blogger, except for the occasional anecdote. I blog for this blog, guest blog on occasion, and blog where I work.
As far as reading blogs, I subscribe to a number of blogs via Google Reader, but I have to say I rarely read them. Having worked at a social media measurement company, I am spoiled, and so I don’t like sifting through blog posts I don’t care about. So, I use Filtrbox to streamline my reading. I have a few filters set up, and I sift through those when I have time to peruse posts that are of interest. I am less interested in who is doing the writing, because there are plenty of unknown bloggers that write good, interesting, thought-provoking posts.

Generally speaking, I find a lot of interesting and relevant things to read through people I follow on Twitter and Friendfeed.

Micro-blogging or update services

Twitter: I use Twitter for updates that are both personal and business-oriented as well. I follow friends, business associates and interesting and important people in the social media space, and I am followed by similar folks. I don’t necessarily follow everyone who follows me. Early on, I did, but I found that some people were micro-verbose (meaning, they would tweet 6 or 7 tweets in a row, which is really annoying). So, I have reduced somewhat the number of people I follow, but am always adding new people as well.

How I access Twitter: I never login to Twitter’s web page to tweet, only to read profiles. I use Twirl as my desktop tweeting app (its also my friendfeed app). I don’t like having to visit web pages to update messaging, it takes too long and makes it even more disruptive than it needs to be.

What I hate about Twitter use: It’s bad enough when someone you’re talking to gets a phone call or email, but by far the rudest interrupter is getting tweets delivered to your phone. TURN IT OFF. I can certainly envision a helpful aspect to getting tweets to your phone — getting updates in an emergency, for example, or getting organized with a large group you are traveling with. But, I have to say, the tweets I get seem really not important enough to interrupt me when I am away from a computer.

FriendFeed: This very helpful aggregator of social tools, from Digg and Technorati to Plurk and Twitter to LinkedIn. After plugging in all my accounts, I have no reason to visit the FriendFeed site, except to find people to follow, which makes it very easy to interact with, at a low commitment level, which I prefer.

In part 2, I will discuss many other micro-blogging or update services, plus social networks.

Interesting posts I read this week, so far:

• Improving your website as a business asset and lead generator: This post at conversation marketing gives you concrete steps to take for a 3-hour improvement on your site (probably good for sites that don’t have 100’s of pages).
• WOM moneyback guarantee: WOM agency BzzAgent is challenging themselves by pitting their efforts against a typical interactive shop — if they don’t do 20% better than an agency, your WOM campaign is free. Kudos to them on that challenge, its very compelling.
• Top 50 Women Bloggers: Want to know which women bloggers have the most influence (granted, as per usual, this is a subjective analysis)? What really intrigued me about this story was the incredible diversity of topics of these women, from knitters to sex therapists to techno-geeks.
• Alisa Leonard has great, cheeky insights when I remember to read them. She added to her list of things to do when you want to get social.

Today, my snail mail showed up with yet another catalog that I never order from. Here’s the basic reality: I can count on one hand how many purchases I’ve made, from a paper catalog, in the last year. These purchases were from two catalogs: RoadRunner Sports (where I buy my running shoes and the very occasional item of running clothes) and Sierra Trading Post (skivvies for skiing and assorted outdoor activities).

I am not a paper catalog buyer, generally speaking. So why does LL Bean continue to send me catalogs? And Lands End, Chico’s, Title Nine (who has a store in my town that I could go to instead), etc? The catalog industry is in the dull-drums, thanks to Internet buying habits of people like me. But, it really peeves me that perfectly good trees are cut down and wasted so that the catalog industry can create glossy catalogs for me to put right into my recycling bin.

I would think that in today’s world of marketing and sales metrics, the catalog companies would figure out that I am a bad target — haven’t ordered from you in many years — and simply cull me from their list. Most sales organizations do this regularly, so that they don’t waste time marketing to people who, frankly, are not interested. Otherwise, marketing lists get unwieldy, corrupt and create lousy return on lead gen efforts.
Compare this to other companies that are more Internet and search-driven, like Zappos and Bluefly.com. I’ve ordered from Zappos (though I did return my order), and though they maybe have a catalog, I haven’t received one from them. Blessedly. Same with Bluefly — what they sent was a clever postcard coupon for a percent off my next purchase, a few months after my last purchase.

So, my message to companies like this — its time to diversify your customer relationship strategy, your lead generation strategy. Thanks to search and other online marketing, many people - maybe most - don’t buy the way they used to even 5 years ago.

• strategize better search terms to expand customers for specific types of products (like running shoes, flip flops, etc) that people tend to repeat buy
• go niche — products targeted at natural communities (scrapbookers, cyclists, techno-geeks) work better than demographics - remember, just because I am a white, middle-class mom with kids, doesn’t mean I have the same interests as another white, middle-class mom with kids who lives next door
• create more interactive shopping experiences for items that are difficult to shop for online (shoes, bathing suits, dress suits) AND make returns of those items free of charge — it works for Zappos

As someone who’s worked on the sales and client services side of marketing companies, Jim Sterne’s post today on Metrics Insider really resonated with me. What he talks about is that sometimes it is difficult to get a decision about contracted metrics goals for online marketing, because there are so many things to measure — you can really get off track quickly, trying to resolve organizational goals with what the metrics are hoping to achieve. Meaning, there can be a disconnect between how you are compensated (as a project leader) and the organizational goals. Case in point: organizational goals for a web site are to increase inbound leads by 10%. But, your bonus, or the metrics you’re being measured against are to improve the lead-to-conversion rate, or to cut the cost-per-lead.

The point is that its key to align the metrics on both sides — the organizational ones and the manager bonus ones as well.

Another good point to remember is that you can measure so granularly on a web site now, that you need to be careful not to get too hung up on measuring so many pieces. Measure and analyze within reason so that the metrics are trackable, but don’t get too bogged down in the endless details.

Ok, definitely been a slacker here on tracking interesting social media-related posts.

Social Networking Digest: Jeremiah Owyang, who covers social media and social networking technologies for Forrester, is keeping a list of news, new research, launches, etc related to social networks. Interesting tidbit from the Consumer Internet Barometer is that 25% of North Americans use social networks.

Ok, I had another link but I changed my mind, and, since now that week is over, well, I guess I have just one link for the week. and that would be last week.