Twitter as a service has had its ups and downs and has added a tweak here and there over the years but hasn’t made quite the leaps and strides or redesigns as many anticipated given its massive funding. The culture has shifted from a seedy hole in the wall bar to a hustling and bustling metropolitan street while the service has mostly sat still.

One of Twitter’s few upgrades or updates has been the recent announcement of “Fast Follow” which allows anyone (whether they are on Twitter or not) to follow any user and receive text messages with that user’s updates, so if you wanted to be notified when we (@newmedialab) have updated our Twitter account, you would simply text follow newmedialab to 40404.

Some argue that it’s a futile attempt to garner new users to Twitter and others argue that it’s a wonderful opportunity for businesses. Blogs have covered this new service but Twitter users have not buzzed much about it, so I don’t believe it will change much of the culture of Twitter.

The upside:

I think the upside to Fast Follow is for messages on an emergency basis rather than users connecting with a restaurant or their insurance agent (who wants to get a text in the middle of a meeting about switching to Geico and saving a bundle?). Who would I Fast Follow if I weren’t on Twitter (thus couldn’t just tell a specific users’ messages to go to my phone)? My kids’ schools for emergency updates live, my city’s services like Amber Alerts and such, or maybe a designer who doesn’t tweet anything other than when they are releasing new exclusive fabrics that I want to get to before others do (that’s just an example, I don’t actually care about fabrics but you get my point).

The downside:

The downside to Fast Follow is non Twitter users that don’t understand why they are getting a slew of text messages about every move of someone or a company that they have followed and they don’t understand what “RT @mashable: something mundane happened today http://bit.ly/sdjfslerj” means or what “omg roflcopter” means or why the hell it’s coming to their phone, and I believe that the non-Twitter users will be even MORE turned off to Twitter because of this Fast Follow option, so the plan to garner marketshare will backfire.

Will there be a culture shift?

I don’t think Fast Follow will denigrate Twitter culture, but I think it will turn off the non-techie users that try to be hip for a second and will reinforce many peoples’ belief that Twitter is for geeks. Fast Follow doesn’t make the space noiser or more streamlined, in fact I don’t think it changes the landscape much at all, but it makes people funneling money into Twitter feel good that the service is actually doing something with those fancy offices. I will say however, that the one upside is for emergency notifications which could help parents and the like.

Photo courtesy of @jenndeeringdavis.

#BATHH stands for “Big Ass Twitter Happy Hour” because not only has it grown into a large monthly event, we primarily use Twitter as the promotional tool (meaning not all attendees are on Twitter and that’s cool). We all get off of the computers for a night and grab a beer together downtown. There’s no guest speaker, there’s no raffle, there’s no cover and there’s no sales pitch, it’s an organically grown social event where people let their hair down. There are business cards swapped, but the point is to connect on a more intimate friendly level with locals (isn’t that how business flows best anyhow? You know it is).

Follow all August attendees with one click:

If you met some new people and can’t remember their names (either because you’re bad with names, their tag was illegible or the mojitos were extra strong that night), you don’t have to remember, it’s all here! For everyone who was a good boy or girl and signed in at the registration table, we’ve published a list of everyone that attended and with one click, you can follow everyone on Twitter that went to the August #BATHH . Easy, no?

Check out the pictures

This month, we had two really talented photographers capturing the fun, Candid shots by @MitchAhrens and Photo Booth by @AnnieRayDotNet. We use them for our events and you should too!

To see pictures from #BATHH events of the past, click here.

When is the next #BATHH?

The next event is on September 16th at Union Park (where we’ll be for the rest of the year) and you should RSVP now with your Twitter or Facebook account and hey, bring a friend!

Picture courtesy of Mitch Ahrens, taken at the August #BATHH.

There are lots of pictures of past events, but this is about when we got a little more organized about it and started doing photo booths. If you have pictures of your favorite #BATHH event, be sure to share them in the comments below!

This post will be updated each month with new links to new pictures, feel free to bookmark.

Many conferences now days base their panels upon the popularity of a topic (or for that matter a speaker) and in all cases prior, we have skipped asking our clients and friends for a vote, but this time is different- we swear! South by Southwest Interactive is one of the largest, most industry significant conferences in the world and the panelists like us have to jump through an extensive series of hoops and compete with thousands of other potential panelists before we get up on that stage.

Panel topic: is the glass ceiling for women in tech startups real?

With a rise in the number of women registering for the SXSWi conference, there is piqued interest from the conference in this particular topic. It is one that is controversial and I have personally witnessed first hand at several conferences and companies. Some say that the glass ceiling is blatantly obvious while others say it is self imposed and we intend to have speakers on the panel from both sides.

As a woman in the industry, I have intensely strong feelings on the topic (although I won’t tell you which side I’m on quite yet), and I believe this topic is important to approach, given the nature of the conference being well populated by tech startups.

If you agree that this topic is critical…

…then please, click the image below to go give it a thumbs up and if you feel inclined, leave a comment there noting why you would urge SXSW to include this panel. We need your vote!
Voting requires SXSW sign in, but it’s painless, we promise!

BONUS:

If you’re having a blast with voting, please also vote for our other panel, “Mobile Technologies That Crush Old-School Real Estate Paradigms.” We appreciate your support!

If you have a SXSW panel, we appreciate your refraining from promoting it here. Thank you.

There is an emerging theory coming from people who have recently signed up for a Facebook account and are now “social media experts.” The theory is that you should always be positive in your communications online. You should share inspirational quotes, you should tell good news, and you should only focus on telling people good things and not the bad. People subscribing to and espousing this idea say that people don’t want to be around negativity, so you should only exude positivity.

On the surface, this is a fabulous idea, but there is a huge difference between being optimistic and glossing over the truth. Excluding negative news from your social networking efforts, no matter your goals online is lying through omission.

In reality, the overly optimistic, sugar coated social media users stand out, not as a beacon of hope as they intend, but as an example of someone who is not credible. On Facebook, tech pundit Brian Carter said, “If all you do on FB is promote your crew, and you’re ALWAYS positive, then you lose credibility in my eyes. I simply don’t believe you because no one is always positive. So you’re editing, and you’re just a marketing version of the real you. Lame.”

On the same hand, no one wants to be around someone who is always negative, that’s the same lie by omission. So we recommend a balanced, honest approach to social networking so you don’t diminish your or your company’s reputation.

Let’s say that you own a Honda dealership and one of your models is being recalled and the media is spinning it out of control.

• If you’re in the school of positive only, you would likely choose to put your Facebook page something about how wonderful the weather is this weekend and how people should come down and enjoy a free TV with every test drive.
• If you’re in the school of negative only, you would gripe on Twitter about what jerks the media is and how they’re victimizing you as a small business person trying to stay afloat.
• If you’re balanced and honest, you’ll probably write a post on your blog about the recent news and in your analysis outline that business will continue for you and what recourse you offer your clients. If they’re unhappy, you’ll trade their recalled car in for them and waive commissions (or whatever), or you’ll repair their car for free.

No one wants to read a bunch of inspirational quotes all day (unless your company produces inspirational quote posters, mugs and shirts as their exclusive product) and no one likes a miser. In an honest approach, you don’t gloss over bad news, you address it and say what you’ll do about it.

CC Licensed image courtesy of Flickr.

Social media can form public opinion about your company whether your company is present or not. Think about when you get together with your friends… if you’ve just had a horrible burger, you’re going to blurt out that they should never go to that burger joint, right? You want to protect your friends from that terrible experience. That very behavior is a standard human behavior that transfers into social networking behavior. Social networks are not like chat rooms of yesterday where there were shields of anonymity because most people communicate online with their real identity, in most cases Facebook, Twitter or their blog.

Social media is a breeding ground for groupthink, and we’ve spent many years working with companies on how to harness that groupthink because it’s malleable and can be impacted by your own input because each part of the group has a voice and influences others. In groupthink, there are social norms and when one person in a group steps out of that norm (let’s say in your group of friends that one of your friends moves out to the suburbs after decades of your group living downtown), each group member individually can’t help but to evaluate their living situation in comparison to the person who stepped out of the norm. A decision has to be made as to whether or not that person that stepped out is on the fringe or if they are the new norm. This is how groupthink is malleable.

Groupthink has been positive so far, but…

While groupthink has so far been seen as mostly a positive with social media, it can also be a negative aspect and one that the majority of companies are currently not equipped to handle, be it their staff or their very culture. Most of the negative impacts companies see with social networking is done by their staff members or done themselves, for example:

In this scenario above (which is extremely common), a restaurant owner is responding emotionally to a complaint rather than listening to the core of the consumer’s problem and being sensitive to it and seeking to make a fan out of the complainer by apologizing and offering some recourse for the consumer (a free desert? a simple apology? drinks with the owner? anything!).

Okay, but I knew all that already…

So nothing I’ve said so far is new. This is all MarCom (marketing+communications) 101 and extends into print media, phone service, point of sale service, television media and the like. You have to consider all of these things first however, before I move on to what’s next…

Okay, did you consider them? Great. Now, think about this- imagine if instead of the owner answering above, one of his competitors answered for him, “yeah, I like 333 but we decided to open our own restaurant up the street because of similar experiences there. We deserved better and so do you, come visit to compare and while you’re here, drinks are on me!”

That’s pretty blatant, but what if the owner of 333’s main competitor asked their buddy to do something similar, “yeah 333 has terrible service and they treat everyone like crap. There were rodent droppings in my soup, I’m never going back.”

This isn’t like when you told your friends not to eat at that burger joint, no, social media objections are more like your standing in front of that burger joint for eternity with a protest sign. It doesn’t go away and it has to be dealt with.

The new threat in social networking

It’s not being done in mass, but imagine if companies began manipulating other companies’ reputations… in their very own Facebook back yard? It’s not hard to sow the seeds of discontent and it doesn’t have to be as blatant as what we’ve mentioned above. It can be simple and subtle yet effective.

The potential for carefully planted seeds of discontent to blossom into bushes, small trees, then soaring oaks demands a strategy (and we’re not talking about hiring an intern to manage your Facebook page). The fantastic benefits of social networks for your business that go on even when you’re not aware they exist, along with the possible new threats of manipulation by competitors demand a new set of expertise in the industry that can only be found by the experienced.

This very reason is why the high school intern cannot manage a social media channel, even if only limited to Facebook. This very reason is why someone with a marketing or communications background is best suited for the job. This new set of expertise is built on a current understanding of crisis management and brand messaging and the role looks more like a surgeon than a pharmacist.

A social median must be able to diagnose where the seeds of discontent were planted and know how to treat that… without the precise diagnosis, your company may be taking Aspirin when it really needs to be on a regiment of blood pressure drugs, clotting meds, anxiety pills and others that will prevent a heart attack rather than simply put a band aid on it after the fact.

The new era of social media strategists are different

The new social media strategist knows more than how to put together a flashy campaign that will resonate with your target demographic and lead to an increase in sales, no, the new strategist knows precisely how to remain vigilantly sensitive to the tone and trend of every single interaction regarding your company as well as the overall trends of interactions. These interactions are messages about you on Twitter, messages to you on Facebook, blog articles about your product’s performance, or comments on your own blog in opposition.

Social media is not just a sales tool, it is as real and human as a person and is just as complicated. Responses from your social media strategist must be balanced between the consumer’s needs and your culture and that balance is hard to find in an employee because most “social media experts” have a background in telemarketing, waitressing or retail sales and are being hired because they have a few hundred friends on Twitter (what a shame).

The new competitive advantage

The competitive advantage for companies is hiring the right talent. Some choose to hire a consulting firm to develop the strategy and hire a full time staff (or multiple staffers) to execute the digital strategy (which we recommend because someone in house that is devoted to you will perform better and understand your culture the best). Other companies choose to hire a third party consulting firm to execute their social media strategy. Either way, the competitive advantage goes to the company that understands not only the unparalleled advantages of social media but the potential threats that must be treated diagnostically like a doctor rather than retroactively like a band aid.

Companies must listen, be vigilantly sensitive and aim to go above and beyond to satisfy all consumers whether they are the happy consumers or the angry consumers. We predict that most companies will remain in the mind set that social media is questionable and may or may not work, but the few that understand that it is no longer a question of “if” but “how” will meet their goals beyond their expectations.

#BATHH is an acronym for “Big Ass Twitter Happy Hour” (yes, cuss word included, we’re in the South, yous guys!) held monthly in Austin and free for all to attend. There are no sponsors and no one trying to sell you anything, just a room full of people that want to get offline and put faces to names of people they’ve met online.

Follow all attendees with one click:

If you attended this month or simply want to connect with other people in Austin on Twitter, simply CLICK HERE to follow everyone that went to the July #BATHH! We do this because some people are bad with names or maybe the mojitos were extra good last week.

Sidenote: if you attended and your name is not on the list, there is a very good chance that I couldn’t read the writing at the check in table, so let us know in comments and we’ll add you!

Want pictures from July’s event?

We were delighted to have the very talented @MitchAhrens as our volunteer roving photographer this month and he’s put up his first batch of shots from last week (despite power outages from the storm), click here to see what’s up so far! If you like what he’s done, please consider hiring him for your next party, event, or if you don’t have any of those, just send dolla bills, y’all!

When is the next #BATHH?

For those of you that are calendar obsessed like me, mark your calendars for August 19th at Union Park next to Katz’ Deli. We’ll be releasing the invitation this weekend or early next week, so stay tuned!

Looking for your thoughts

If you want to be quoted in an upcoming article about #BATHH, please email austinlabs@gmail.com or leave your thoughts in comments. Tell us why you like #BATHH, or tell us about your first one, or even tell us what volunteering at check in has done for you- anything good or bad (bad? how could that be?!) is welcomed.

And, as always, if you have any ideas on how to improve this free, organic event, we’re always looking for cool ideas, give us a shout!

To get ready, and so you know someone in advance of the party, or simply to get ready so you know more people in advance of the party, CLICK HERE to follow everyone on Twitter that has already RSVPd yes to #BATHH.

If you haven’t RSVPd yet, it’s free and you should. Right now! It’s easy, just click here.

We’d like your feedback- does following people in advance of the happy hour help you or is it a waste of our time? We hope you’ll opine in comments below!

The same person in the same breath said, “3000 people get my updates and information every day, guaranteed.” If you’re a company and you’re thinking, “wow, I should call that dude because he can get my brand message out there like crazy,” you should stop right where you are. Pull up a chair, because I’m about to tell you why that is complete bologna (no offense to the bologna creators out there).

What this guru/expert/maven is claiming is that he has an expansive reach in social media, but the dirty little secret is that my 4,948 Twitter followers, 1,812 Facebook friends and 596 professional connections on LinkedIn does not mean that my reach (although expansive) is 7,356. Add on that the nearly 300,000 blog readers I touch every month in the various blogs I contribute to. My reach isn’t technically 307,356. The gurus are adding up numbers from all of their networks to determine their “reach” and “guaranteeing” they can reach that many people and badda bing, badda boom, magic is made!

Why those fudged numbers are bull:

Once a user of any social network surpasses about 50 connections, it is near impossible for them to read every single thing that every single connection says. Given that Facebook users average roughly 100 friends each, you get the picture that not all messages from all users are read.

These numbers are also bologna because of check in frequency. How can you possibly guarantee to reach 3000 users per day when not every user checks in every single day? Of even the most dedicated and tech savvy Twitter users (as defined by those who have downloaded TweetDeck for example), only 92% log in every day. The average user probably visits a tenth of that amount.

The trend is away from live constant contact where every reader reads every update to a more loose, “I’ll read the public timeline of updates for the few minutes that I am physically logged into the social network on the days that I feel like it.” In other words, no one reads the entire public timeline anymore, that is so 2007.

Guaranteed reach is a myth.

We consult with companies every day and the first thing we hear is, “how do I get 400,000 followers on Twitter?” to which we have to ask of course about what their goals are, where that arbitrary number came from, etc. Conference speakers who have never developed a strategy in their life yet are professional “keynote speakers about social media” are telling people to “hurry up and get mass followers which equals reach” yet misunderstand the fundamentals of reach.

To drive home my point, I want you to think about television advertising. Just because 3 million people watched the season premier of that show you like doesn’t mean that (a) 2.5 million didn’t fast forward through the DVR, (b) leave the room during commercials, (c) mute the commercials, or (d) any other infinite variable that means someone didn’t watch. But the tv ad sales guy will tell you that he can get you in front of 3 million people. Communications professionals know there is a margin to count on but the reality of 3 million is as unrealistic as the “guru” guaranteeing reach.

“Guru” guy can’t guarantee how many people will look just as he can’t guarantee how many of those people will share his message, and how fewer will take action at the point of sale. It’s just like the picture above… in a noisy crowd of people, with a good strategy, you’ll hit your target… but the rest of the crowd isn’t listening and your strategy should take that into account because the “guru’s” strategy misses this basic fundamental of Marketing 101.

photo source

Take for example a highly respected industry blog out of London. After lurking for many months in my feed reader, I finally was drawn to an article of theirs that I wanted to engage in comments, but then the frustration began. After my comment went to moderation, I was prompted to go to my email, open a message to verify my email address, and finally, copy and paste a url into a new browser tab/window. Then, I was verified as a secure, worthwhile commenter.

Because I’m in the industry and I’m aware that this measure is taken to prevent security threats, I was only barely irritated. But I wondered how a non tech savvy person would react. Would they understand that they really did need to take that extra step for their comment to be seen? Would they be turned off by such a complicated procedure (I mean, if this is how complicated it is to comment on your blog, how complicated would it be to work with you if I hired you)?

How NOT to lose commenters on your blog

The reason commenting gets complicated is that businesses focus on security and/or lead capturing over valuable interactions. If your blog focuses on the value of each commenter and treats them naturally like you would in real life, you’ll keep more commenters than you lose. The cornerstone of community building is sincere interactions, so if you met someone on the street, would you shake their hand and then ask them to create a secret handshake before you were willing to speak with them?!? Of course not, so why do that on your blog?

Use an auto-captcha if you’re concerned with security and if you want all commenters to subscribe to your newsletter, simply add a line under all comments above the submit button to that effect, but don’t make commenters jump through hoops or you’ll lose them in the three seconds it takes them to evaluate whether or not the process is too complicated.

CC Licensed image courtesy of Katie Krueger via Flickr.com.