"I love Twitter" photo from Lost Art of Blogging blog

OK. In my last post I noted what Twitter has done for me. But how do others use it to effect? One of the fun things to watch as Twitter has grown is how it’s gone from being a platform for marketers and techno-geeks to becoming a real communication tool for people from many walks of life. Early on (a year ago), we had lots of discussions about if people like CEOs would ever adopt Twitter. I had my doubts as there is (at least at this time) no measurable return on investment for using Twitter. Interactions online don’t generally directly yield sales. And CEOs are usually too busy to bother tweeting on a regular basis. Despite that, they’re coming online. And its fascinating to see how they’re adapting Twitter to work for them. Many people still don’t get it. There are a lot of marketers rushing to open Twitter accounts for their clients because they’ve heard that’s where they need to be. “You’ve got to be on Twitter. It’s the new frontier.” But many more ARE getting it. They understand that Twitter is for talking AT people, but for talking to them. And if you’re lucky, starting a conversation with them. Here are some examples:

Politics
Twitter was a breakout this political cycle. We saw congressmen and senators adopt the service. We saw a John McCain campaign staffer get in trouble for using the service to point people to questionable videos. But we also saw Barack Obama use the service as an outreach program. It was a big part of his grassroots organizing system. Obama became so successful at it that his was the first user account to garner more than 100,000 followers.

John McCain, on the other hand, never really got Twitter. His campaign had an account (opened by default by the Twitter folks simply to enforce a fairness policy), but only made 25 tweets and only picked up fewer than 5,000 followers.

Entertainment
Twitter may prove to be marketing gold for some people in the entertainment industry. Not as a push/sell tool so much as a community-building tool. Some accounts are actually set up and used by the entertainment personality. Many are set up by PR, marketing or agency people. In both cases, again, some people get the power of Twitter, many don’t. One case for the “don’t” category is county music star Aaron Tippin. He’s got great music, but his Twitter account proves a bit tone deaf. I’m sure it was set up by a label or PR flunkie, but it’s Grade A fail. Aaron’s account was set up in June 2008, follows no one and has only 28 followers. It also has a paltry 2 entries. One notes that they’re setting up a Twitter account. The other encourages people to go buy Aaron Tippin’s newest CD. No wonder there are only 28 followers.

On the other hand, there are plenty of celebrities using Twitter to build community and communicate with fans. Some follow back, like rapper MC Hammer, others don’t but are still very conversational, such as Heroes stars Greg Grunberg (there’s something fun about Greg posting photos of his chair on the set) and Brea Grant and Christian music artist Jeremy Camp. They don’t follow many people, but they do keep up with conversations about them and often respond to people who address them.

Business
Another fun trend to watch has been businesses getting on Twitter. They were slow to adopt at first, but they’re beginning to carve out strategies on how to effectively use Twitter. You can now contact Comcast (Comcast Cares), Zappos (a phenomenal online shoe seller, this Twitter account is actually manned by their CEO), Virgin America and The Home Depot (manned by one of their corporate communications people, but well run). Dell has become legendary in their use of social media to connect with customers, including their use of Twitter. They have some 23 Twitter accounts, including one that links to Dell employees who are Twitter users, some for work, some not. As always, some of these accounts are used well, some are just more places for PR people to push information.

In my opinion, Twitter works best when used as a communications tool. That means to put out meaningful information and respond to others as well. It also works best when it’s personal. You don’t have to be the CEO of a corporation or an entertainment star to use the “official” Twitter account (though it helps), but the communication needs to be personal. People need to feel a connection with whoever is talking for the Twitter account. Otherwise, it’s just a one-way conversation.

One final word of warning, be careful about fake users. There are plenty of people who have Twitter accounts claiming to be someone they’re not. It’s mostly done for fun, but that doesn’t make it any less painful to be tricked.

Additional info:
Jeremy Peppers’ rules for using Twitter
A list of companies, celebrities, governments and others of note using Twitter
6 Unual Entities That Tweet

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My deepest condolences on your recent loss. It was a monumental loss (president, house and senate) and I’m sorry you had to go through that.

In the next few days and weeks, there will be much hand-wringing and introspection. Probably even some sniping and finger-pointing. I pray that through it all you will be able to stop, work your way through the grief and finally face the truth. You lost and you deserved it.

Here is some quick advice to help you avoid some of the navel-gazing. If you think your loss was due to the economy, John McCain as candidate, talk radio, Sarah Palin, liberals, George W. Bush, the Iraq War, ACORN, Dick Cheney, Al Qaeda, MoveOn.org, the Talaban or high gas prices, you’re wrong. Those were parts of the puzzle, but none of them is why you lost. You lost because Barack Obama knew what Reagan knew and what Kennedy knew: You must offer people something to hope for and something to aspire to. Not something to vote against.

You’ve lost touch with your core values. You’ve disconnected from your roots. You’ve used Ronald Reagan as a magic incantation for winning rather than as a role model and lesson on how to win. You sold your soul for 30 pieces of silver and 10 years of power. And now you reap what you have sown.

Quit looking back. Look forward, return to your core values and find your voice again. Or don’t… and fade away.

If you wish to discuss further, have your people call my people and we’ll do lunch.

Best wishes,
A Startup Guy

P.S. John McCain, in your moment of defeat you were a class act and I applaud you.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I definitely have a love/hate relationship with politics. After years of following “the game”, I’ve come to realized that I actually dislike politics, for the most part. Probably because politicians are frustratingly out of touch. But I do have to admit that I love the competitiveness of the races and the challenge to get your/my/our ideas out there and accepted by the public and by politicians. I also love to watch the plethora of marketing activities, both good and bad.

In some ways, I could see myself enjoying working for a political marketing firm – especially in the digital area, where so many campaigns are lagging behind in understanding. On the other hand, I think I’d be frustrated at the inability of campaigns to define and cling to their core values – something I think is sorely lacking in politics right now.

I actually followed closely the races to win the party nominations on both sides – Republican and Democrat. I discovered POTUS ‘08 on my XM radio and was addicted to it through the primaries. However, as soon as both parties had their candidates, I completely weened myself from the election. I wasn’t jazzed by either candidate and just needed a break. Here in the last 3 or 4 weeks, I’ve paid more attention again. However, mostly to watch how the campaigns carried out their marketing. With a quick disclaimer that I consider myself a libertarian-republican and don’t have an axe to grind for either side, here’s what I’ve seen.

Barack Obama has done a fantastic job all around. His message all along has been simple: Change. He forced Hillary Clinton to adopt that message to try and compete in the primaries, then beat her with it. Likewise, McCain tried to adopt the theme of change early when it was apparent it was ringing true with voters. It worked in the primaries, but he just couldn’t make it play against Obama, who originated the Change message in this election cycle.

Obama has a great website, both attractive and well built. When you enter, it focuses on their single message: Change, and then as you go deeper into the site it delivers more information. Obama has also done a pretty good job with onine tools such as Twitter. His is the first account to break the 100,000 followers (people following his online posts or “tweets”) barrier. (You can read more on Obama’s use of social media in the campaign here.)

No matter if you like or dislike Obama, you have to give the man and his team props for delivering to the American electorate a message that they so badly wanted to hear. And delivering it in a believable fashion. He’s managed to get in negative jabs when necessary, but still delivered an overwhelmingly positive campaign. He’s given enough specifics to make his message “real” and understandable for the average person without putting them to sleep. Even his infomercial grabbed people’s heartstrings and fired their imaginations and belief in him. Afterward, it seems so many people forgot this was a commercial, not a documentary. It was trying to sell something and viewers wanted to buy, so they went for it hook, line and sinker. From a marketer’s point of view, his campaign has been the poster child of the point of Seth Godin’s book “All Marketers Are Liars.”

On the flip side, John McCain abandoned the “Change” campaign message (more or less) when it was obvious he couldn’t compete with Obama on it. He still talks about changing Washington, but it’s not the tagline for his campiagn. His signs, stickers and website instead promote the message “Country First.” It’s a simple slogan, but not a simple message. It has a couple of problems. First, it plays into the Democrats charge that Republicans are isolationists. Second, it’s not a universal message. In a time when we have an incredibly unpopular president AND congress, “Change” means something (generally the same thing) to just about everyone. “Country First” is rather subjective and a bit unclear. McCain has a very attractive website, but the visitor is hit with too many messages from the get-go. There’s lots of great info and resources on the site, but a good website needs to “funnel” the user to where they want to go. There’s just too much info to process at once from the beginning of the McCain site. And McCain is on Twitter too, but only by default and someone else’s actions. (His campaign’s past indirect Twitter interaction ended badly.) That’s too bad because The Mac is missing out on a world of digital interaction. Talk about going “grass roots”!!

McCain supporter or not, objectively I don’t think you can give him and his team as much credit as Obama’s. He just hasn’t found a message that resonates with the people. He’s found a couple recently that resonate well with his base and may help bring a few defected Republicans back into his column, but mostly they’re too little, too late. McCain’s also gone negative, which is necessary, but he’s done it in a way that doesn’t leave you with a positive message from his camp at the end of the day. And I don’t think he’s given enough specific information about his plans. He’s given some, but they’re not things that people remember and buy into. Most of the statistics I hear people quoting from the McCain campaign are related to his attacks on Obama’s plans. It’s really hard to be FOR a guy who seems to mostly be AGAINST someone else. In the end, I don’t think McCain’s campaign has been “bad” per se, but they remind me of the Texas-Texas Tech football game last weekend. Obama and his team have simply outplayed McCain. Like Texas, McCain simply doesn’t look like a #1 team who deserves to win.