Tweetworks

Read any “How to Use Twitter for Business” post or article and you are guaranteed to come away with one consistent piece of advice. LISTEN!

Listen to what? Listen to people’s conversations of course. Duh! More specifically listen, via Twitter’s search tool, for any mention of your brand or a set of keywords relevant to your business. In the age of RSS feeds and Google Alerts this just makes sense. Write a quick Twitter search query and pay attention to what people are saying about you, your product/service, or related topics.

Now what?

So, you are now scanning the Twitterverse for what interests you. If anyone so much as breathes a word about your brand you are on it. But, what should you do if someone tweets something that meets your search criteria?

Look, people know what they say on Twitter is like talking in a nightclub. It’s public and anyone and everyone can see your conversation. Part of the reason they are there is to meet other people.

People have also grown to accept the fact that contextual ads will be displayed just about everywhere they roam online. No one even skipped a beat when Google started serving up ads related to the content of their email in Gmail. Most rational people understand that marketers are out there and they are looking for opportunities to engage with people in the market for their goods or services.

How do you, and when should you engage with people (they are people BTW) whose tweets pop up in your search results?

When Google serves up an ad based on the content of your email it does so via an algorithm written into the Gmail software. There is not a person looking at a screen somewhere going “Ooh! This guy mentioned one of my keywords. Let’s zip him a message.” Instead, with Twitter search it is very much like the nightclub analogy.

Imagine you are seated at a table next to another party who is having a conversation. Suddenly you overhear something that interests you. What’s the appropriate way to handle the situation? Like most social situations, it depends:

1. If the person mentions your name (yours or your brand’s) then in most cases it is only natural to listen a bit more closely. Then, if the conversation turns from more than just a casual mention into one of material importance then of course engage. Either to defend yourself, defuse a situation or to heap praise and gratitude on a fan. In Twitter parlance, @ reply to the person and then follow them if you see fit. In most cases people appreciate it when a brand they love lets them know they care enough to listen. I admit, I was a little excited when @Starbucks followed me.
2. If the person is looking for help by asking for a resource, asking where to buy what you sell, or something similar then I think we’d all agree that engaging is pretty straight forward. I recently tweeted about a kids meal deal at Qdoba and asked if anyone knew of other kids meal deals. Wouldn’t you know it @KidsMealDeals followed me and replied letting me know that their site is a listing of kids meal deals. Rock on! Thanks for solving my problem.
3. If you sell sneakers and someone mentions sneakers at the table next to you but doesn’t mention your company name or ask for a recommendation of where to buy some new kicks, now we’re getting into a delicate area. We’ve all had that weird experience when the lady next to us just couldn’t help herself. It’s awkward. So, what to do? Do you @ reply the person who tweeted about sneakers, telling them you sell sneakers and so on? Do you follow the person? Which is basically a nice way of letting the person know that YOU are listening. If you ask me, this is the CREEPY scenario. In any other social situation this would be very weird and unsettling. Imagine you are talking with friends at lunch about needing new running shoes and when you get back to your desk you see an email from Nike. If it happens once it’s easily dismissed. But, if it starts happening on a regular basis it becomes very unsettling. Personally, I’d recommend abstaining from following in this situation. You can still continue to listen on Twitter search for a cue that matches scenario one or two and then you can engage.

Is it still eavesdropping even if the conversation you overheard took place in public?

This is where we get to the SoS (Sustainability of Social) question. In this case I am specifically thinking about Twitter. Tweeting isn’t really like the table conversation example because if it were it would be like standing on the table and writing on the wall with spray paint and then reading it out loud with a megaphone just to make sure everyone got your message. Should a person have a reasonable expectation of engagement etiquette when this is the way they communicate?

While we can argue that they shouldn’t, I suspect people do have such an expectation. Isn’t the follower/followee construct effectively meant to create a listening nexus? When a new user signs up for Twitter there’s no prominent alert that lets him know that what he says will be actively monitored by people outside his sphere of friends. In fact, many novice users are often surprised to discover that such a thing as Twitter search and other monitoring tools exist.

My concern for the sustainability of Twitter should this potentially “creepy” listening behavior continue unchecked is based on two things:

1. There will be, and must be, more novice or casual users added to the mix if Twitter is to grow to the scale necessary to be sustainable and profitable. Twitter will not thrive as a niche service, it is a mass market service. This future wave of users will be less tolerant of such perceived “creepy” listening. Care should be taken when assuming that mass adopters will behave like the early adopters. I know I am getting kind of famous for this statement but, think about how your mom will use or react to this service as it is today.
2. The creepiness will grow to revulsion and eventually rejection. Imagine for a moment that you tweeted “I’m grabbing a beer with friends.” Later that night your iPhone buzzes and you see that you have a new follower. It’s @MagicHat. You laugh and tell your buddies. “How cool is that?” you say. But, what happens when Budweiser, Guinness, Miller, Bass, and hundreds of micro breweries decide to adopt a similar strategy? Suddenly an innocuously tweet about grabbing a beer brings a flood of new listeners and potentially several undesired engagement attempts. Now we’re getting into WTF territory right?

Maybe I’m paranoid or overly sensitive. Lord knows I’m biased as I think Tweetworks is solving this problem by focusing on the conversation instead of the follower construct. But, my desire to tackle issues such as this is sincere. I kind of have a vested interest in the sustainability of social media. If you think I’m missing something or supportive viewpoint (either are welcome) let me know here or better yet in the SoS group.

Click Here for a Flash Version

What makes us think that new media won’t experience the same problems as old media?

Newspapers have been around for a very long time. And the business model of charging the customer a small fee to receive something he valued worked extremely well for as long as printing presses have been rolling. The fee was kept small by advertisers subsidizing the cost because they valued getting their message in front of news consumer. Now of course the world has changed:

1. Consumers are willing to pay for the pipe because they have to. Yes, you can get free WiFi but it usually requires you buy a cup of coffee at Panera Bread.
2. Consumers have “bought” the notion that information is free. They really don’t care that it costs money to gather, analyze, format and distribute the information. I like free, don’t you?
3. Consumers want to use services for free AND they want the privilege of being uninterrupted by advertising or any other attempt to create value for the producer or host. Do RSS and TiVo ring a bell?
4. Consumers are still willing to pay for books (paper and electronic formats) however mostly because they are forced to by copyright law.
5. Consumers are still willing to pay for entertainment. iTunes, CDs, DVDs, movies, shows and so on. Partly because of the copyright laws but mostly because people realized that pirating was wrong. Most honest people got over it and started paying for music downloads. Isn’t if funny how people feel bad about stealing from P. Diddy but journalists and software developers can suck it?
6. Consumers are blissfully unaware that the tab is coming due. Does the insatiable thirst for “free and cheap” come with a cost?

I know, I know, the monetization question isn’t new. But, my concerns are more macro and systemic. I know it may seem way out there to imagine Facebook or LinkedIn going under but tell that to Bear Stearns, GM or the Chicago Tribune. Each of these companies at least had customers that were willing to pay for their products or services.

Do you think there would be a federal bailout if Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn were all on the verge of going under? Imagine the cost to people and businesses whom have come to rely on these services in their daily lives.

Should social media companies start a “If you use it, pay for it” campaign similar to the music artists who were stunned by Napster’s arrival almost a decade ago? Might some small fee like the 50 cents for a daily paper be applicable if not applaudable? Can you envision what new products and services might hit the market if people actually were financially rewarded for their work?

I’ll end by taking it up to 30,000 feet. How might the U.S. economy fair if we started thinking about economic stabibility of the services we rely on?

I hope you will share your thoughts, analysis and comments here with this post. I would also love to see you join me in the SoS group on Tweetworks to continue the conversation. Lastly, be sure to watch Episode 3 of Tweetworks TV to get more in depth on this issue.