One Tweet Can Define Your Brand (Forever)

If anyone still doubts the power of social media, look no further than the case of Justine Sacco (story available here).

While en route between NYC and Cape Town she posted several insensitive tweets. By the time her flight had landed, her tweets had gone viral, becoming the number one trending topic on Twitter- and it wasn't a positive response. Even though her Twitter account was deleted and the posts taken down, her name will now be inextricably linked with those posts forever.

Her comments were incredibly stupid, inappropriate, and indefensible. At the same time we have all dealt with the frustrations of travel and I'm sure can understand her mindset at the time of posting these tweets. Should she have lost her job (in PR, nonetheless)? Absolutely. However, should Justine Sacco be forever defined by one careless mistake? I'm not so sure...but permanence and virality are the rules of the social media landscape, and by playing the social media game you are tacitly agreeing to abide by its rules.

There is a lesson here not only for individuals, but brands as well. As brands dive headfirst into social media as new way to connect with customers, structure needs to be put in place. Social media can be a powerful tool for defining a brand, but is wrought with the same dangers that individuals face, and more.

There are numerous examples of successful social media campaigns reinvigorating brands (see some examples here), but there are also instances of rogue tweets/posts tarnishing brands, sometimes irreparably. Companies should have a clearly defined process, with checks and balances or editorial oversight, to ensure all social media posts are on message and don't cause any (unintended) controversy.

On a personal note, I do feel concerned about how social media will impact future generations. Most of my youthful transgressions preceded the existence of Facebook, but our children may not have the same freedom to make mistakes and learn from them- instead of being defined by them.


Sources: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html?_r=0

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/here-are-finalists-years-best-brands-twitter-vine-and-everywhere-else-156122

TWTR and GOOG dance...FB and TWTR tango

Twitter confirmed that Google will once again license a Twitter data feed, enabling users to search real time twitter posts, vs. Google crawling the Twitter site.

As user growth continues to taper for the 140 character messaging company, this deal is helps to further validate the Twitter business model (licensing revenue is up $41M from $16M YOY), while the market also agrees; TWTR rose 17% since the 2/5 market close through the 2/7 close, due the announcement of the deal.

http://adage.com/article/digital/twitter-strikes-deal-tweets-google-searches/296996/

This is welcoming news to Twitter investors, in light of the recent announcement of FB to begin selling ad media in real time with the ability to target users based on their conversations.  If you were logged onto FB during the Superbowl this past Sunday, you might have noticed targeted videos being triggered in mid conversation through your news feed

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/facebook-super-bowl-hub/

Twitter – King of Publishers

Awe.sm co-founder Jonathan Strauss recently published an article 'Twitter drives 4 times as much traffic as you think' giving facts as to how publishers underestimate the volume of links shared / traffic driven by Twitter. Awe.sm's findings were as follows:

1. Just under 25% of links shared on Twitter produced a twitter.com referrer.
2. Nearly a third of links shared on Twitter contained no referrer information.
3. 13% of Twitter links listed another referrer.

As mentioned above, only 25% of the traffic generated from tweets comes with a twitter.com referrer. This makes calculating the true amount of traffic attributable to twitter very complex. There are a number of reasons why links shared on Twitter don't get the referrer credit they deserve. Many users simply use Twitter clients that don't pass referrer information which means that this traffic will never get attributed to Twitter.

And increasingly, links shared find their way onto other sites which display tweets and feeds – traffic generated from these tweet will also won’t have Twitter as its referrer. The reason for this is that a lot of 3rd party websites syndicate tweets on their own sites, to add real-time content to compliment their service. As the tweet is now on a 3rd party site, it means that when the user clicks on a link, their browser will pass the referrer details of the site which was displaying the tweet, not Twitter.com. This issue of being unable to truly track the impact of tweets suggests that Twitter has a huge amount of advertising potential for publishers - and it is just getting started in this area.

Since last year when Twitter first launched its advertising platform and its two ad formats – ‘Promoted Tweets’ and ‘Promoted Trends’ it has been slowly experimenting and releasing more and more features for marketers. Early this March it launched geographical segmentation which allows marketers to do more localised and targeted advertisements e.g. showing different ads to different Twitter users across the world. It is also working on a strategy allowing marketers to target Promoted Accounts–its pay-per-follower feature–by country.

This was followed by their recent launch of “Quickbar” (their much hated feature) – a bar installed across the top of their app which “shows trends and other important stuff”.

Lenore in her post has already talked about the emerging trends of “Promoted Tweets To Followers” in the Twitter story. This would allow brands to send messages directly to users who already follow them by inserting advertising at the top of their timelines. These tweets would appear in the followers’ actual timelines. In the past a Twitter user would only see personalised tweets it he/she search for a specific term but this is no longer the case.

If the Quickbar uproar was any indication I am sure lots of devoted Twitter user will have something to say about all these new ad features of Twitter. Twitter might be trying to please its users by saying that Quickbar is an ‘alert system’ that will deliver ads and other information to the user but that is just sugar coating the truth. Quickbar is an ad delivery mechanism first and foremost. Regardless of what the Twitter users say, the truth of the matter is if Twitter cannot convert its inventory into money stream, we will eventually be tweeting its demise.

Other Sources: Quickbar, Personalised tweets