Meet the New Corporate Boardroom – But Not Yet

As a result of the Web, Social Media and all its parts have taken us by storm. They’ve caused an unprecedented shift in transparency, ease, speed and reach in the distribution of a message in almost any form you want. But I think the biggest shift is in the level of transparency that’s come out of it. So powerful is this shift that all the brands we know so well are feeling the heat to comply to survive and grow by being a “part of” rather than “aloof to” the consumers and people in general – and really mean it. They had to change.

All Great Causes Begin as a Movement, Degenerate into a Business, and then end up as a Racket.

Like most other enterprises in the beginning, these hyper-successful Online products and services ala’ Social Media were not the makings of a corporate boardroom. Then somewhere along the way they thought they should develop a corporate board.  In came the Venture Capitalists with the boardrooms and the meetings. The different and radical thinking that got these startups to where they are gave way to acting like all the other guys.

The transparency that has “gingerly” nudged brands into conducting themselves with more responsibility and sensitivity in regards to the consumer has yet to reach the boardroom level with the old school “behind closed doors” approach to things. Money changes everything so things can stay the same – but times they are a changing.

Because the speed, reach, and transparency of a message is only going to continue to accelerate and evolve , I believe an entire new breed  of Venture Capitalists are going to emerge that’ll look through different eyes and take different risks and find a way to use the transparency and everything else to their advantage. They’ll adapt and change out of sheer survival.  In other words they won’t fight this paradigm shift created by Social Media and they won’t want to. They’ll leverage it.  They’ll think like the very people that created these game-changing products and services. The end users will become the boardroom.

Understanding the name itself, “Social Media” tells the tale. It is “Social” meaning involved, part of, engaged, responsive, mindful, and eventually transparent. All parts of a solid relationship. One Tweet can alter a business’s approach drastically in action – or non action at their peril, (depending on if they are even paying attention.) The corporate boardrooms are holding on for dear life to protect the status quo.  But how long do you think before the boardroom has to do the same as other aspects of their brands and become Social on a level I don’t think they want to look at yet?

Blackball Online Marketing provides SEO Pittsburgh Services and Pittsburgh Online Business Consulting services.

Twitter Monetizes - Finally

…or the Big Dog needs to eat if you want him to hunt.

…or feed the Big Dog if you want him to hunt.

Unless I just missed the memo why didn’t Twitter simply Tweet their intent to monetize and leverage the invaluable feedback they'd get from the very people who have incorporated a steady diet of  Tweeting in their daily professional and personal lives. Twitter could approach this in a number of ways while having a lot of fun with it. Twitter could Tweet surveys, ask for ideas, maybe even a contest for the best Twitter monetization idea, and simply asking what do you think - we’d love to hear from you. 

Twitter would be asking input for one of their most important business decisions from the very people that make Twitter soar. The effect could prove to be very positive. Imagine the creativity from all that input.  There may not be enough bandwidth to hold the explosion of involvement. You could say this has the air of opportunity. If you want to engage and rally a community, here it is. And with such a radical and different approach to a corporate business move it just may create “pause” with those “other guys” and/or possibly raise the bar - if not change the bar’s direction.

I’m saying this because I’ve read some excerpts here and there that Twitter was fretting over their decision to monetize, to what degree only Twitter knows, but this is where Twitter turns the fretting into freedom by way of a dialog that simply says “we’re in business, we want to stay in business, and we’re pretty sure all you Tweeters want us to stay in business, so what do you think, how do you feel about this, and what are your ideas.” Twitter is a fantastic, intelligent and innovative product and with us in the SEO, Social Media and information business we’re finding new ways everyday to use Twitter to help our clients do business better which makes the deal this - what took Twitter so long?

Twitter is a business, and this is America, so why would Twitter fret over this decision? First a little peek into their history tells us something. And what it tells us is this; Twitter began to help, to solve a problem, not so much to make money, and before you know it Twitter is a business, better yet, an “accidental empire.” With this in mind, maybe human nature is the reason for Twitter’s monetizing angst, based on the “fear of offending” which we all struggle with at times. But hell, what do I know, I’m just speculating. Only Twitter knows for sure.

I don’t think Twitter has a thing to fret about.

Twitter and the Follow Limit of 2000 Rule

Pittsburgh, PA - In the course of our Social Media Marketing Campaigns we, at Blackball Online have found that Twitter really drives traffic to our website. We used the tools we had read about in our research of this medium to boost and analyze our visitors we gained from Twitter. View our past blog posts on Twitter to read about these tools. We follow all of those who follow us.

Once we reached 2000 followers, Twitter would not allow us to follow any more people. So, we did some research. When we checked out the help button on Twitter’s Navigation Bar we found this:

“What are follow limits?”

Twitter recently added follow and update limits for stability and abuse control.  You can read more about this here.

I can understand Twitter’s need to protect the integrity of its API from spammers, Bots and auto-generating Tweet tools that place an extreme burden on the servers, but please let me know what the ratio is. It states,

“We've also placed limits on the number of people you can follow. The number is different for everyone, and is based on a ratio that changes as the account changes. If you hit a follow limit, you must balance your follower/following ratio in order to follow more people- basically, you can't follow 50,000 people if only 23 people follow you. Based on current behavior in the Twitter community, we've concluded that this is both fair and reasonable.”

I am not, however, a fan of the statement that the number is different for everyone. I have sent requests with no replies from Twitter as of yet. Maybe this post will help. I have noticed many of our followers have hit the same limits in their accounts. Possibly Twitter could be a little more transparent with their rules. By the same token Twitter is growing into their role like most of us.

If you are aware of the ratio of followers/following that allows users to follow over 2000 people, please let us know by commenting on this post for all to see. We at Blackball Online and the many other Twitter users who are affected would be greatly appreciative.

The first article below suggests that the number of followers to following is within 180 tweeps (people). So if I were to follow 2001 people, I would need at least 1821 followers. But to follow 1 more I would need to unfollow 1 – thus keeping the ratio within 180. If this is true, this is another hurdle to building a following. The article also offers some strategies for building a powerful and robust Twitter network. It is definitely worth the read.

Clearly Twitter is still going through many growing pains and this will all need to be worked out. I just wish they had a central source with definitive answers to this and other questions.

Other links to this topic:

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/social-networking-sites/40745-twitter-2000-fix.html

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/12/twitters-2000-follow-limit-raises-a-ruckus-but-how-many-people-can-you-seriously-keep-track-of-anyway/trackback/

http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/topics/what_happens_if_i_hit_a_twitter_limit

Walter Cronkite and Twitter - Strange Bedfellows

Usually we post tips and information about small business, social media, and our Pittsburgh SEO company – Blackball Online, but this post is about social influence and the power of the brand.

When I was growing up, one voice stood out above all others for trust and authority, Walter Cronkite. His voice and demeanor was always steady, unwavering and calming during the myriad of world-changing events I saw him cover. He was always there, describing the news and current happenings with that unmistakable voice. A rock in an uncertain world at times, this man was the definition of Authoritative. He never lost his cool and rarely showed emotion. As for social influence, he embodied the term. He set the standard for integrity while he reported with the steadiness of a true professional. We could all learn a bit about how to act and carry on our business from this man.

In 1963 Bob Dylan sang, “The Times They Are A-Changin.'” The same year Walter Cronkite announced the death of President Kennedy to so many astounded viewers. This profound change Dylan spoke of has never been truer than it is today. Social media has empowered all of us to expound on any topic which suits our fancy and usually we are all of varying opinions, but I don’t think anyone would voice an unkind word about a man like Walter Cronkite and in this we can all agree.

In the fast paced digital times we now are experiencing, we could use a steady voice like Walter Cronkite’s. But now we can all have our own voices heard with Twitter and other social media. If we can somehow add just a bit of that steady tone and genuine realness Cronkite was known for, we’ll all be the better for it. Walter Cronkite was a brand unto himself that spoke authority, trust and consistency – someone we could count on.

With the Iranian elections, Twitter has become a brand unto itself as well. We can use Twitter to convey the relevance of products and our business. We can also share our thoughts; promote our products, our business, our opinions, our friends, and our condolences. “And That’s The Way It Is” – Walter Cronkite.

Pittsburgh, PA - After joining Twitter (see previous post) and becoming familiar with the landscape, we’ve started to branch out to our community, both locally and across the globe. This has been thoroughly enjoyable. Connecting with people and their businesses is wonderful and rewarding. Thanks to all of you who follow @blackballonline and to all of you who hopefully will after this post. We follow all of the users who follow us. This is one way we can repay you for all the gracious help and information you have given us.

Now to the business at hand, after joining Twitter, we were alerted to the unbelievable amount of add-ons and applications for this tool. We will list the ones that we have employed as of this post. If you are aware of some glaring omissions please comment or email us at our Pittsburgh SEO website or Tweet at @blackballonline.

#1        Wefollow – http://wefollow.com this site lets you add your Twitter account to 3 directories for user search and inclusion. We added @blackballonline to #seo, #internetmarketing, and #Pittsburgh. The # sign denotes the category tag for that area.

#2        Tweetdeck – http://tweetdeck.com this desktop widget opened up my Twitter Eyes to the possibilities of this tool. Fantastic ability to analyze friends, monitor whenever your username or company is mentioned and so much more. Tweetdeck is a must have in my opinion.

#3        Twellow - http://www.twellow.com the self-named Twitter Yellow Pages allows for business listing placement and directory search. Get your business listed for free.

#4        Twitalyzer – http://www.twitalyzer.com a very powerful tool for analyzing and evaluating the activity of any Twitter user it recognizes and reporting on relative influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity, velocity, clout, and other useful measures of success in social media. This is available as a standalone or an add-on to Firefox.

These are the Twitter tools we’ve implemented so far. I’m sure there will be more. If you are looking for a specific Twitter tool, before you write your own API, just visit the Twitter Fan Wiki at http://twitter.pbworks.com. This site is huge and packed full of outstanding tools and info.

All these tools were very easy to implement and very intuitive. If you have problems just tweet us and we’ll do our best to point you in the right direction. As mentioned above, you can follow us on Twitter @blackballonline, sign up and comment to this and other posts on our Pittsburgh SEO Blog, or email us via our Pittsburgh SEO Contact Page. While your there, please subscribe to our RSS or email feed(s) to keep up with folks here at Blackball Online.