It’s been a rough couple of months—which is like 5 years in social media time—for McDonald’s in the social space. (Warning, I’m gonna get historical here, so if you just want to know why McDonald’s keeps getting killed on Twitter, skip to the end.)
Buying bloggers to bullshit
It began in the late fall with All Access Moms, apainfully disingenuous microsite, blog, commercial & social campaign that asserted the genuine wholesome goodness of McD’s fare, based on the (apparently dubious) fact that it contains potatoes.
And once you wade past the polydimethylsiloxane (a component of Silly Putty™!) and such, there are no doubt potato ingredients. So not a lie.
But it’s a pretty big stretch to say they’re “great food for your family”, and therein lies the crux of McDonald’s social media problem: people don’t buy bullshit messages anymore.
Further, we’re all capable of spotting mommy blogger pandering. Any campaign with “mom” in the title drives me nuts automatically, but the pretense that we’re going to get an unbiased evaluation of a product from a campaign launched by that product is, you know, transparently untransparent.
A bashtag so bad, it coined the word “bashtag”
In January, McDonald’s moved away from the #MeetTheFarmers hashtag associated with All Access Moms & paid to promote #McDStories, to which fond fans were supposed to attach their misty McDonald’s memories. They didn’t.
Look over there!
The day after the onslaught, McDonald’s promoted #LittleThings, perhaps equally vague & suggestive, but at least differently vague & suggestive.
#LittleThings happened to be already being used by Hilton, but at least wasn’t hated on quite as badly.
Pushing the Shamrock Shake for St. Patrick’s Day, McDonald’s is once again suffering Twitter mockery over #Shamrocking, a sponsored tag that is 1 part totally awkward and 1 part completely mortifying.
Adhering to the same “go viral” checklist they used in All Access Moms, McDonald’s sought to create a tebow-like planking-esque “do this in a photo” meme.
This #shamrocking thing is an insult to the Internet. Shame on you, McDonald's. Memes aren't marketing campaigns: http://t.co/IfNbIvqt
So why does McDonald’s keep stepping in a big steaming pile of social backlash?
It’s the heavy-handed attempt to dictate the message; it’s saying your product is what it isn’t, it’s clumsily not checking who’s using a hashtag or coining a dirty phrase, it’s obviously buying bloggers for their “influence” and creating “memes” for their “virality”.
These are all things the mighty-vocal marketing constituents of the Twitterverse just loathe & can see through easily. It’s a very old kind of marketing being applied to the wrong platform.
Twitter is too snarky, too sharky. McDonalds should play in the safer waters of their Facebook page, where people have already given permission to be marketed to by professing their likefulness.
CBC’s Terry O’Reilly—formerly of the formidable Age Of Persuasion advertising podcast—has a new show (sort of) called Under the Influence that demonstrates the continued relevance of his mellifluously-delivered marketing insight & history lessons.
For the last six seasons, we’ve explored the overt art of persuasion. But advertising is no longer a loud one-way conversation. It’s a delicate dialogue now.
So we leave the age of persuasion and enter the era of sway and leverage.
The man knows when it’s time to rebrand! Subscribe through iTunes, if you must (it’s free to download new shows, but becomes $1.99/episode after 2 weeks), or search for it on your favourite podcast app.
The SoLoMo Show
Subtitled, for the acronym-challenged, “Discussing Social, Local and Mobile Marketing”, this new show from Secret Sushi’sAdam Helweh & Heat’sCory O’Brien get together for, like, over an hour once a week to chat modern marketing.
They analyze, they case study, they’re very current, and they tell you stuff you don’t know with ample supplementary linky links. It’s like SoLoMo school. Secret Sushi also put me in a Social Media Explorer blog post once, so I think he’s nice & I’m happy to see him producing such quality commentary.
@secretsushi @coryobrien Only 1/2 way through, but @solomoshow is a quality podcast. Informed, insightful, actual news, well researched!
Social media folks are saying that Facebook’s news feed favours everything but brand page content, and even suggesting that brands bump up the prominence of staff’s personal profiles through subscribers.
Does it make sense that Facebook would deprecate page updates, when surely the bulk of these brands are, have been or potentially will be advertisers on the platform? The argument I could see for that is that people prefer updates from their friends over brands, but since when does Facebook favour usability over dollars?
If that’s the way things are gonna be, Facebook needs to throw page admins a fan engagement bone. One almost universal wish in the hearts of social media managers is the ability to tag fans in our status updates. We obsess over it.
Facebook did start allowing brands to tag people in comments when those users were already on the thread, but those people were notified of comments anyway. Small victory. Brands can also tag other brands (useful in the case of a nonprofit with corporate donors), but individuals would get a big charge out of being singled out, IMO, and benefit practically from potential new followers & rise in “influence”.
Facebook, show brand pages some love. Let us tag people. We promise not to abuse it & treat it like the privileged permission marketing it is!
@EricaGlasier @mikeduerksen *you* would, but think of all the assholes out there: Thanks for liking us-enter our contest, |Erica Glasier| !
The social web thrives on reciprocation & building other people’s social capital. Twitter bakes in the ability for brands to shine attention on their fans. Facebook, as a larger platform, needs to catch up. Fingers crossed this is in the works.
most popular story on the Metro’s site, submissions went up 4600% and we had around 1200 page views since this morning. Thank you, media!
So, Erica, why did you start a Winnipeg photoblog?
I was inspired to start the blog by Instagram’s “popular” page. Because Instagram has a global user base, you get these fascinating little glimpses into daily life around the world.
I thought it would be worthwhile for us to share Winnipeg with each other like that. If you have stereotypes about different neighbourhoods, maybe they’ll be demystified a little by a guided tour from the people who love them.
The more we get to know each other’s spaces, and by extension know each other, the easier it is to think of yourself as part of a collective and to care what happens here.
My submission for “wrongpiping” was approved! I feel so altruistically helpful. Now the world has a reference point for dealing with distressed social media managers.
I’ve only had the minorest of brushes with wrongpiping, but because I speak for some fairly enormous brands on occasion, I put an iron-clad anti-wrongpiping strategy in place to prevent future white-knuckled moments.
I use the Twitter desktop app for personal accounts & another interface entirely (web, Hootsuite, etc) for brands. This allows me to use both simultaneously with no chance of using the wrong persona.
Where it does get sticky is with web retweet buttons. Sharing web content is a big part of what I do personally and professionally, so there’s no foolproof way to avoid clicking ‘retweet’ and not noticing the wrong little avatar in the corner (except using 2 browsers at the same time, which is insane.) You just gotta pay attention.
Facebook scams usually rely on minor greed, like “insert big box store is giving away $1000 gift cards to every slob who can muster the effort to click like” (but no such lavish reward for their actual, in-store customers for some reason. Realistic, right?)
Scams aren’t just annoying proof of your *friend’s lack of critical thinking skills ; sometimes they’re dangerous likejacking attempts (where you can’t see the thing you’re actually liking/sharing—potentially a virus.) They work because we trust our friends.
Which brings us to this stomach-churning hoax, “Little boy needs 100 shares for a free heart transplant”.
I mean, this scam doesn’t even make sense.How would shares benefit the hospital or donor who would pay for the supposed heart transplant? Do I need to point out they’d only get horrific PR from tying a kid’s life to “Facebook engagement”?
So, I mean, Google is your friend. Check if something’s fake. Was it Confucius, Jesus, or Elvis who said “All that glitters is not gold…?”
* I don’t blame my super kind-hearted friends for sharing this. I’ve retweeted fake amber alerts for missing kids before, because even though you know they’re probably fake, what if they aren’t? We all just wanna help.
I saw friends posting the o.b. tampon “Sorry” videos on Facebook, but ignored them. Sure, the ads are probably 65% hilarious or whatever, but I have other stuff I need to do. Vaguely, I wondered why O.B. was sorry, but, like I said. Stuff I need to do.
My attention was finally ensnared by a Facebook ad that spilled the beans about the motive for apologizing—some sort of distribution issue.
Hello, who cares?
Marketers often grossly overestimate the extent to which their customer notices/cares/understands their back end issues. So it can be a little confusing to base a campaign on a problem not everyone knows about. And yet, the disappearance of o.b. from Canadian shelves was apparently some sort of massive big deal.
I’m not the target market (I don’t care), but I could be the target market (if I’m convinced to buy the product in the crossfire). Marketing intrigue!
For the audience who does care, the brand makes a glorious apology, with technomagical incorporation of your name into a song and video visuals sung by a fantasy-obsequious boyfriend. Everyblogger I saw covering the campaign took the exact same screenshots I did: ye olde name in rose petals.
Buttons, consider yourselves pushed.
For people who aren’t into the brand, they still enjoyed a positive brand experience with the magic video and have an impetus to go on a second date with the free-lovin’ coupon attached to the end of the ad. Ladies who were actually inconvenienced by the retail glitch get an absolutely satisfactory apology.
And here I am sharing their story without even liking this product (though now I’m a fan of the brand). That’s dreamy marketing.
There are certain realities in social media interaction for serious, trusted brands, such as news organizations, political parties and nonprofits, where sophisticated layers of branding—including sensitivities surrounding appearance of bias—are concerned.
Every decision to follow, retweet, reply, list, #FF and smiley face other users can be deconstructed for bias.
This isn’t helpful where journalistic integrity is required.
Social interactions—for instance, “supporting” someone by retweeting them; following—actually muddy transparency, because they imply relationships where potentially only information gathering or “listening” occur.
This appearance sometimes can’t be made balanced by following “both sides”, as not everyone’s on Twitter.
When news orgs don’t tweet you back, don’t take it personally.
Some news organizations policy is noninteraction—basically treating twitter as an RSS feed & not participating in the social aspects. You’ll see many more followers than followed, and no retweets/@ replies. Why might they do this?
They’re letting the quality, speed & accuracy of reported news be the product, as opposed to ancillary conversations built around it.
They’re building up their reporters as trustworthy touchpoints.
They’re preventing unconfirmed reports from being lent the weight of their brand.
They’re conscious of the appearance of bias.
They won’t benefit from nor have the capacity to engage in becoming mired in endless opinion-based arguments.
They don’t want to demonstrate editorial bias towards the most sensational (ie, most talked-about or retweetable) content.
Twitter knows it’s branding bread is buttered on the “realtime news network” side.
People are pondering Pulitzers for Twitter reporting. Twitter’s pitch is that you’ll have instant news based on your interests, not social interactions.
Pew Research Centre for People & the Press reported in in December 2010 that 55% of Twitter users post links to news. Personal currency on Twitter is largely linked to sharing news, either “first” or curated for niche relevance.
Can news orgs increase followership with social media chit chat?
Sure. I’ve done it for a major news outlet. But the above reasons/risks outline why it may not be worth the effort for already strong brands. Training reporters to engage, investigate & report in real time is often a better use of the new media budget.
News orgs have a privileged place on Twitter—they have what people want. They’re the “media” in “social media”, you know? Their job is to provide information to the public, not chat about it.
You know you’ve levelled up when you suddenly grasp an adage.
“Social media doesn’t scale,” they say.
That means “the more attention you pay to social media, the more social media demands your attention.” Growing an audience means there’s an audience there to serve.
I'm running so many social media accounts, when my phone buzzes my Pavlovian response is to projectile vomit :/
Get it? It’s what he does.Michael‘s Pavlovian response to someone suffering* on Twitter is to give them good “customer service”.
We’re like shoe salesmen that assure you the leather will stretch in the width (though not in the length. But you know that).
*Don’t call Kids Help Phone. It’s just been a long (but awesome) week or two. I’m in the middle of a book, which is a pretty epic project as I’m sure you know/can guess.
Canadian Marketing Association (Manitoba)‘s Digital Day 2011, Fort Garry Hotel
Thursday, Oct 20, 7:00am (jeez) – 5:00pm I know this one’s in October, but I had to include it! I was asked to speak at it, and though I decided not to, it’ll be an amazing event featuring Amber Mac! You’ll wanna be there!
When you get chatty bloggers (like Alyson, Liz and James) together to talk blogging with students (like Kenton Larsen‘s Creative Communications class at Red River), they’re bound to skip some of the important stuff.
Like a clear understanding of the benefits of big undertakings like “be your own PR machine through blogging.” So here ya go, future communications professionals
Professional blogs are basically there to serve as an expanded resume, and it helps to know why you’re bothering to become a little publishing machine. What is it employers are going to see for all this effort?
Passion
Everyone can tell when you’re stoked about something (so write about stuff about which you are stoked. It’ll be a better read). Employers ❤ passion.
Insight
“Thought leadership” is the more grandiose buzzword for strong analysis. Tear something apart. Put it back together. Show me you saw beneath the surface, figured out a motivation, or connected some previously unconnected dots with your keen, keen mind.
Ambition
The fact that you bother to construct this whole persona, do research to impress me with your investigative skills, and make images to ease my understanding & please my eye says “hey, this person really wants it”.
Personality
An employer who wants to get to know the you behind the resume will know PDQ if your charming, quirky self is the right fit for their organizational culture. This can help you find a good corporate fit, so be yourself within the realm of good taste.
Skills
Posting struggles, successes, media you’ve produced, and plain ole’ writing shows me what kind of communicator you are. Visual skills translate especially well in the blog medium—cartooning, animation, slideshares, infographics. If you make it and it doesn’t suck, post it. If it does suck, ask for critique so you can improve.
Frequency
Besides showing your knowledge of subject matter, social media & communication, frequent blogging on topical stuff shows me you know what’s going on in your industry & you’ve got the commitment to prove it.
Connections
Comments show people are reading. Retweets show your stuff is worth sharing. Clips of speaking engagements or presentations demonstrate your ability to work a room.
Capability
On a meta level, outside the subject matter you blog about, you’re making it clear you know how to think like a publisher. Brand journalism and content marketing are a growing underpinning of social media marketing. The future employer is relieved to see you’ve worked out all your blogging disasters on your own dime
Hey, did you know links you post on YouTube have a
greater halflife density? They totally do (data shows).
Charted-up studies like this one published on Mashable today abound in the social mediasphere. Dan Zarrella tells us the premium moment to tweet and the right content to get retweets. Google Analytics pinpoints the precise amount of time a love-starved geek spends onsite til she figures out you’re not Mark Zuckerberg’s ex-girlfriend Erica (no matter how much you talk about him).
Data is seductive. Numbers hint at quantifiable ROI; keywords suggest targeted content.
But do the numbers bog us down?
A social media professional is expected to come to the table armed with several kinds of understanding:
Technological: the nuances, etiquette, recent and pending changes, scandals and business dealings of any given social platform;
Analytical: the insights, retweets, time on site, users in your city, marketshare, best (numerically ascertained) moment to post, the most influential audience;
Conversational: the chitting & the chatting, PR, link curation, @-replying like a squirrel on crack, graphic design, photography & video production;
‘Tech’ takes up an unreasonably large chunk of the day. Just knowing which tech blog is imploding, which social service is getting invaded by Klout, and where privacy settings are actually located is a full time job. You know when I’m reading the internet for the first half of my day? It’s keeping up with this stuff.
‘Analytics’ play a big role in the how, when, and sometimes why. Metrics shape policy; they redirect (and sometimes save) campaigns. You have to look at, understand, and infographicize this stuff for management. Also a time vampire.
‘Conversing’ takes all damn day, period. And night. And you need to look good while you do it, with groovy photos to illustrate whatever minor point you’re making. Sometimes you have to work a room in person.
‘Marketing’? Gotta say thoughtful, well planned, editorial-calendar-anticipated, keyword-stuffed, problem solving content that also happens to be mind-bendingly, ground-breakingly creative is tough to achieve when most of your day is consumed by the first two.
Can a mere mortal excel at all 4?
To be frankly frank, I’m finding getting to Point 4 a bit tough.
Is marketing in general suffering a creative slump because new media folk have their noses pressed against the platform glass right now? Does it take giant creative teams (read: giant budget) to produce amazing work? Is the era of “social media manager” over, in favour of an entire marketing department focused on publishing? Do you get an Old Spice Man inhouse, or do you have to leave that to an agency?
Of course I’m not saying “don’t measure”.
We have an unprecedented amount of insight into who’s thinking about what, where, when, with what kind phone in their hand. “Ethnography” is a marketing buzzword for a reason: all these heat maps and bar charts are a lot of fun and let us spot trends/avoid disasters.
I’m just wondering—given the often 1-person show social media departments are—if the glut of numbers and the constantly-shifting technological requirements are stealing the show from the Big Ideas.
Should brands attach themselves to one particular social network (perhaps, the one most of their customers use, or the one that delivers their message the best)?
In the wake of the G+ introduction, a lot of my social media friends (myself oh-so-included) are dismayed at the prospect of updating yet another social network (never mind crafting a content strategy that takes unique advantages of the features offered on that platform).
Does a brand need to be active in every social space?
Here's the rub: I do not have time for Facebook & Twitter & Google+, but can't bring myself to quit any of them.
There’s certainly a temptation to. When you’re a social media manager, you don’t want to
stop playing with the shiny new object
risk missing the next big thing
look like you don’t know what’s going on
But brands are owned by companies who have to turn some sort of profit, so it has to be worthwhile to begin a whole new thing on a whole new thing. Resources are not unlimited and customers should be served with a thoughtful content strategy heavy on the utility of the interaction.
What should you do if you’re a community manager? Manager your community, play with the shiny new thing on a personal level (so you do know what’s going on & can report to your management accurately), and watch for real traction from users and big brands. See how it’s done, and jump in when you can justify a solid market. Until then, relax
Something weird happened when I started using Google+. I felt free. I felt like a little self-reinvention, like not talking about marketing, like posting funny stuff, or gross stuff, like talking to a lot of people I don’t know. Like socializing.
I thought it was all the fresh air of a brand-free space. But it turns out it wasn’t marketing that was oppressing me. It was Klout.
I installed the Twitter Klout plugin for Firefox last week. It shows people’s score right beside their name in the stream. The better to judge you with, my dear. I immediately, subconsiously, consciously, and sickeningly began determining my interactions by people’s number.
Comment from a 21? Adorable; I’ll get back to you—later. Retweet from an 80? Plus one! Double klouties if I “engage” back with a reply. Like a simplified Empire Avenue (which has way too much math to be called “fun”), I played Klout’s numbers game obsessively. I’m a competitive person.
Twitter became calculated, and I didn’t like myself very much.
Tweet or don’t tweet, there is no “I’m working”.
The secret of Klout is that Klout rewards vapid socializing. If you put your nose to the grindstone and produce something beautiful, meaningful, helpful, or valuable—you know, the content on which the social web thrives, which the vapid socialites get famous for spreading—you’re punished by the algorithm for not tweeting.
That’s not right.
What also isn’t right is the callous numerical valuation of human beings. Sure, marketers need to know who gets the most attention in this word-of-mouth environment, so they can buy “ad space” in the age of influencers. Klout commodifies people so they can be sold to advertisers. Let’s see how long people tolerate endorsements as friends.
I am not a number.
In discussing the reductive power of relying on technology to rank us, media theorist Neil Postman observes that algorithms cannot classify human ability (just for fun: substitution of “Klout” instead of “bureaucracy” or “technopoly” etc mine; the man died before all this social stuff went down):
[Klout's] role in reducing the types & quantity of information admitted to the system often goes unnoticed, and therefore its role in redefining traditional concepts also goes unnoticed.
In other words, Klout can’t measure the whole picture, but walks around like it does and acts insidiously on your valuation of human beings.
There is, for example, no test that can measure a person’s [Klout]. The test transforms an abstract and multifaceted meaning into a technical and exact term that leaves out everything of importance. [Klout] relies on our believing in the reality of technical machinery, which means we will reify the answer generated by the machinery. We come to believe that our score is our [Klout] or our capacity for [Klout].
There is no denying that the technicalization of [Klout] is a serious form of information control. Institutions can make decisions on the basis of scores and statistics, and there certainly may be occasions where there in no reasonable alternative. But unless such decisions are made with profound skepticism—that is, acknowledgement as being made for administrative convenience—they are delusionary.
In [Klout], the delusion is sanctified by our granting inordinate prestige to experts who are armed with sophisticated technical machinery.
Neil Postman, Technopoly, The Surrender of Culture to Technology, 1993
Can I tempt you with some shiny glass beads?
In the middle of this, a very ironic Klout Perk—the “media buy” that’s supposed to rent my word of mouth ad space—hits my inbox with free movie tickets.
Winnipeg Supermegainfluencers: don't let @Klout buy you! Save your soul! Spare Jason Bateman the embarrassment, if for no other reason.
Ego compels me to tell everyone about it, spreading the Klout virus. (I’ve learned from a friend who uses Klout Perks professionally that the score that constitutes “influential” in different markets can go pretty low, so don’t congratulate yourself too much if you received one of these).
This isn’t the game I want to play. I’m enjoying Google+’s not-yet-very hierarchical social space. So Google, stay on brand & don’t let Klout scrape your network for “influence data”. Don’t tolerate this high school bullshit. It gets better, remember?
.@hacksandwonks Think about what you're a billboard for: the ranking of human value on a numerical scale. It's not right. #DoubtKlout
I think they should have went with @TheLC as their Twitter handle, though. Does anyone call it The Liquor Mart?
Interestingly, interactive plays a role in our new liquor paradigm, with
“enhanced product information and public interaction through an upgrading of the MLCC website”. —Bruce Owen, Winnipeg Free Press
MLCC, I realize the hilarious location-based drinking games practically program themselves, but if you need any help strategizing drunken public interaction fun, give me a dingle. I’m an expert.
Social media success ultimately comes from the same thing as general social success: be a fascinating, compelling, genuine, supercool human being. But unless you’re an art star whose career hinges on publicity at all costs, there’s a couple topics you wanna stay away from, like religion, politics, and stuff that makes the Twitterverse go (rightfully) nuts.
Today’s case study: Uptown Hockey, an NHL-level sports management firm, express their opinion of marriage.
The backstory
The disaster
Very sad to read Sean Avery's misguided support of same-gender "marriage". Legal or not, it will always be wrong.
Don Reynolds of @uptownhockey 's email & phone #...tell him directly what you think of his "tolerance" ! uptownsports.ca">don@uptownsports.ca (905) 632-549
My car has satellite radio, and the funny thing about it is that 90% of the time it’s tuned to CBC. [I work with CBC Manitoba (news ) and CBC Radio, but I've been paying Sirius monthly for no reason for a while now].
Turns out our national public broadcaster talks about smart stuff & topics I care about. Here are my hand-selected podcasts that you should totally get.
Mellifluous Terry O’Reilly talks golden age of advertising, replete with insights into classic marketing strategies.
Juicy tidbit: this podcast is brand new, because it took forever for CBC to get permission to use all the copywrited jingle action. The back catalogue of older stuff isn’t up on iTunes (yet?).
See through everything: subscribe to this podcast.
I first heard of Q when Billy Bob Thorton went nuts on silky smooth host Jian Ghomeshi last year. In solidarity, I gave Q a listen, and ❤ the easy-going analysis of current culture (always situating Canada in a broader ‘North American’ context) and media panels examining—you got it—the media.
Ian makes a pretty solid point. Beyond the marketing value of social brand promotion, new technologies like barcode reading are going to have trouble gaining traction if the staff rush you out the door whenever you whip out your phone.
B&BW has over 1.5 million Facebook fans, so they’re doing just fine in social media (though fan photos skew towards shots of girl’s bathrooms, ew.) The mall security mentality is just a legacy thing that should be rethought and a more sociable photography policy communicated to retail staff.
Storify scared me
I put the above together with Storify, which is a snappy way to assemble a Twitter conversation. Speed ultimately depends on the verbosity of your acquaintances; thank god for dated tweets.
You’ll note it’s not a published story, just an image. I got too scared to pull the pin and “publish” once my tale was ready to roll.
What does “publish” mean? Where is it going to go? (On Storify? Automatically tweeted? On my permanent record?) Will it phone Neil & Ian and tell them what I’ve done (I think so)?
I love the—I’m not going to say curatorial, but you know what I mean—functionality of Storify, but I’m pulling back from charging everything on the privacy concerns credit card these days.
Even the FAQ sounded a shade ominous. Storify’s product wouldn’t work very well if tweets disappear, so I get why they need to do this, but today at least I felt like the whole thing was getting too serious.
I’m a tweet deleter, but that may no longer be a valid butt-covering strategy. Take note.
Livetweeting. It gets you out from behind Seesmic—at least the way I do it—to stretch your legs and bring a little media to your social.
Last night I tweeted a 1000-person event from media conference in the morning to gala dinner at night. Here are my observations.
Breaking news & the MSM
As you know, I’ve been thinking about mainstream media’s role in information dissemination lately, and the media conference was a case in point. See these MSM guys standing there in their video pool, dutifully gathering the story for their news organizations? Before they’d even finished shooting I’d tweeted the whole story, with photos, out to our audience. They spread the news to their audiences.
A: that’s a lot for the MSM to contend with. They have standards of accuracy to adhere to that slow them down in their reporting, but they’re up against citizen journalists who have no such demands. It’s a much smaller deal for me to go back and delete a tweet or say “whoops!” if I make an error.
B: what’s the incentive for the media to cover your event if you’re scooping them so badly? Could livetweeting damage your org’s relationship with the MSM? If your news is big enough (or your Twitter audience small enough), it may not matter. Just something to think about.
Hotel wifi, a must for Apple Fanboys
Moving on to the evening event, I was stymied, as usual, by thick hotel ballroom walls. I cleverly (and swiftly, this time) got the credentials I needed to use local wifi.
I’ve seen livetweeted rooms with banks of laptops clicking away, but I like to do everything from my iPhone. I can get right up in the action, post Twitpics to illustrate the story, and check out all corners of the event.
The thing that worries me is that I appear to be standing there ignoring the heartfelt speech of someone very important as I type away on my phone. I hope people know what I’m doing—does it help if I pause to snap a photo?—but the majority of the live audience must think I’m shockingly rude. I’m calling right now for abright orange livetweeter vest that clarifies your totally unapparent but actually extremely intense interest in the real life proceedings.
Here you see HOT103′s Ace Burpee grinding the event to a halt to pose for my Twitpic, thereby highlighting my dinner-time cellphone use to an audience that included the Premier of Manitoba (who also generously, but less embarassingly, posed for a Twitpic). Bright orange vest, people.
I run two Twitter clients and two Twitpic uploaders simultaneously—well, as simultaneously as the iPhone will allow—so that I can talk to my personal network at the same time as the event’s audience. The two apps keep me from delivering commentary from the wrong source in a frantic environment.
The benefit of covering the event from multiple perspectives is that my personal audience, who may have no interest in the brand I’m working for, get exposed to some of what’s happening. This helps lend social proof-style credibility to the brand, build buzz & hopefully garner them a few more followers.
For this reason, it’s smart to use livetweeters with the biggest networks possible in your relevant niche or location.
; 
