Social media addict

Top Ten Ways you know you are addicted to social media:

10. You know what hashtag and retweet mean.

9. You know which side you are coming down on in the number-of-followers v. quality of followers debate.

8. You head home early from a party so you can tweet about it.

7. You no longer send kisses or throw sheep at your Facebook friends.

6. You know who Scobleizer is. You even follow him.

5. Some of the wildest nights of your life have happened on blip.

4. You understand the relative merits of TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop and Streamy, and wonder if Co Tweet really is a better business solution.

3. A friend tells you that they just don’t get twitter, and you smile slightly and say, “Don’t worry. You will.”

2. The doctor put you on paxil at the beginning of 2009 because of frequent FailWhale sightings

and the Number 1 way to know that you are a social media addict:

1. You google yourself.

Fail whale

A Little Birdie Told Me

“What’s up?” That’s why most people use twitter. It is a remarkably effective way to stay connected in short bursts, and networks can extend all over the world.

In the same way that people share bits of their lives, they will also complain about what goes wrong- and, where before the Internet their thoughts would have touched a small group of people, now online influence extends to the thousands.

This video had over 2 million views when I first saw it at a few days old. As of today’s date there were over 4,800,000 views. In fact, when I flew United on the way back from San Francisco, the flight attendant announced at the onset, “We will only be a few more moments, folks, as we gently stow luggage aboard the plane for the flight. We do NOT break guitars at United.”

Twitter is an ideal way to step in and solve problems before they get big.

Your responses have to be under 140 characters. If you don’t understand the acronyms, www.urbandictionary.com is a huge resource for all modern permutations, although keep your blinders on- it tends to be NSFW in parts.

You sign up at twitter.com. For company use, you probably want to find a name that can be used across all platforms, so if you decide to build a facebook page or expand your presence, you can consistently use a name. To search to see if the name that you like is actually being used anywhere else, try http://knowem.com/. I run my name through every now and then for the fun of it to make sure that someone else isn’t using it on other sites that I don’t frequent.

Sign-up is simple:

Twitter Sign in Screen

Does an online presence work?

Here’s one example of a success story- and there are many others. Do you have fond feelings for your cable company? Most people don’t- and Comcast wanted to change that. They developed a twitter presence, choosing ComcastCares for the twitter name instead of just Comcast. This was actually a very smart move, because each time the individual trying to reach Comcast on twitter typed that name, he or she reinforced that idea.

Frank Eliason uses a search to track comments about the company: “Eliason discovered that by doing a search for the word “Comcast” (and occasionally “Comcrap”), he could find tweeters who just happened to mention service complaints he could address. In December 2008, he celebrated the handling of his 22,000th tweet.”

Instead of waiting for contact from the person who is unhappy with service, Eliason monitors a search and proactively deals with problems. This is very important in creating a strong customer service social media program.

Companies like Comcast are dealing with an individual’s issues very publicly in the twitter offer to help, as all conversation is seen in the public stream. Additionally, press releases announcing the addition of a social media component to customer service will reach a large audience in a more effective way than advertising. And Comcast itself has been the subject of a multitude of news articles, again more effective than advertising.

What does this mean? A company can add a whole new layer of publicity- but this can be a double-edged sword. You need a plan in place to be able to address any complaint that is brought up. Comcast’s offer of “Can I help?” would not be effective if systems for dealing with problems were not in place.

From http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/10/30/why-does-comcast-care-about-twitter-video/ by Jeremiah Owyang ]]> http://twitterdiaries.com/2009/08/12/hello-world/feed/ 0