Squarevox

Time and expense tracking web app Harvest is now allowing users to interact with the application via Twitter. This is really fascinating.

People have flailed around quite a bit trying to provide business cases for Twitter and generally failed. The value is real, because facilitating connections and interactions among people has business value, if not an easily measurable ROI. People have also wondered how anybody could make a business out of Twitter, because they’re offering a free service that sucks up more and more infrastructure resources. This might be an answer.

From Josh Catone at Read Write Web:

When Danny Wen of Harvest emailed us to let us know about the upcoming Twitter integration, he told us that the company looks at “the integration as a start of bringing more business use cases to Twitter.” We agree, and further it could signal a potential business model for Twitter. While currently everything on Twitter is free — from setting up an account, to running a bot, to using the API — it seems plausible that Twitter could start charging for business uses.

Harvest is essentially using Twitter to power a quick mobile interface with their application and that’s something that perhaps Twitter should start charging for.

Now, there’s nothing here that Harvest couldn’t have done without Twitter. Basically, this is just letting people submit information to their application through SMS. But Twitter’s already built that, so why go do it again?

If Twitter starts charging people for this kind of service (which I think is reasonable; it offers something useful for web app developers), they do have one challenge. It’s got to work. Twitter’s lack of reliability has become a running joke among users, though it seems to have improved in recent weeks. You can get away when your infrastructure is just used for twittering with your peers. For business applications… no.

And of course hardening the infrastructure requires money, so this all makes perfect sense: charge people to use Twitter with their apps, and you’ve got a revenue stream to support the infrastructure.

I like it. I’m curious to see who else enters this sort of arrangement with Twitter.

Over at MarketingProfs, Paul Dunay asks, Is Social Media More Difficult in B2B Than B2C? He says yes. I say, yes, but no.

Huh? Paul starts out with something that I really disagree with:

When I say Ralph Lauren, Nine Inch Nails, Vineyard Vines, GAP – or even Apple – you get a sense of a very homogeneous type of person. You get a picture of exactly who I mean and the “lifestyle” that brand portrays. When I say Ralph Lauren, it’s like reading the preppie handbook.

I do get the images that Paul was probably thinking of when he wrote that, but I also think those images are probably wrong… and social media offer you a way to find out how wrong they might be. Sure, Nine Inch Nails makes me think of a formerly disaffected 32 year old, and Ralph Lauren makes me think of polo players in Connecticut, but let’s face it: those may be brand perceptions that marketers are trying to create, but that’s not the same as the customers. I heard about the latest NIN release on Twitter from a middle aged technology editor with a wife and kids, and Ralph Lauren clothes are worn by lots of people who’d fall off a horse if they tried to play polo. Similarly, my sister turned me on to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and while that might make you think of a young demographic, we’re two among many middle aged fans.

That’s where the power of social media come in. When my sister was visiting and said “Oh, come on, let’s watch this show, you’ll love it!” that was social media in action - though offline social media in this case, the enabling technology being a couch. But when non-profile-fitting Nine Inch Nails fan starts Twittering about the new release available for download to other non-profile-fitting listeners, that’s not just social media in action - it’s also something you can observe to find out more about who loves your brand, why they love it, and who they are telling about it.

Which brings me back around to B2B and B2C. Conceptually, social media for B2C branding is easier to get a handle on. People like to tell their friends about things that matter to them, and B2C products often touch deep, emotional chords in people. Here’s my favorite band. I love this wine. You need to go eat at Joe’s. My iPhone is the best thing ever.

That doesn’t, however, mean that turning customers into brand ambassodors empowered by social media is an easy task. I have a brand of detergent that I love and to which I’m quite loyal, but I’m unlikely to tell you about it unless you say, “I have a lot of allergies, I can’t find a detergent that works for me.” I’ve talked about the one and only brand of plush dog toys that my pup can’t destroy in five minutes - but not by name, just as a puppy update on my personal blogs for his online fan club who’ve watched him growing up via blog posts and photos. It’s just not that easy to get people so engaged in a brand that they want to tell everyone about it, or to create compelling content about that brand they’ll want to pass around.

But when you do that, you’ve struck gold.

B2B is harder to sort out. It’s hard enough to get people talking about dog toys, even though they love their dogs; how do you get them talking about VoIP services or software platforms or enterprise network monitoring solutions? Well, they’re unlikely to become brand ambassadors.

But they do have a network of trusted peers that they will turn to when they have questions about these things. And those peers are generally eager to share knowledge. And you don’t have to hit that magic button that makes somebody laugh out loud and think, “I’ve got to send this to my friends!” You need to be useful and relevant and provide valuable information.

That takes work, but it’s also in many ways much easier. Maybe that’s my history as a B2B marketer talking, but it’s easier to analyze business needs and feature requirements than the “wow” factor, at least for me.

I’ve oversimplified here, of course; there are emotional and factual components to both B2B and B2C marketing, and the same people are making purchasing decisions in both; their personalities don’t transform when they arrive at the office and start thinking about enterprise purchases rather than household purchases.

The bottom line, though, is that in social media, as in all media, B2B and B2C have common elements but are different animals.

One of the most common worries for people starting business blogs is whether they will get negative comments. Darren Rowse at ProBlogger wrote a good post about blog hecklers last month, and it’s worth reading. He does a nice job separating out the types of negative comments you might get.

I wouldn’t call all negative comments “heckling.” Someone might have a negative comment because they had a horrible experience with your company or product, and so when you write about those things, they disagree with your take on them and are going to tell you. This will probably happen less often than you expect, but it will happen, and that’s part of blogging. (It’s also an excellent chance to get some very honest feedback and you should listen to it and learn from it.)

But there are those people who really just want to be disruptive. So while you must be ready for negative comments, and you should not try to hide from them (or hide the comments themselves), it’s perfectly legitimate to uninvite a true heckler from the conversation.

If you don’t, they will tend to take over your comment threads, and the results will be a less useful blog for you - and for the other readers who do want to hear what you have to say and engage in conversation with you. Be judicious, give people the benefit of the doubt a reasonable number of times (sometimes tempers get hot online), but when it’s clear someone’s just trying to disrupt things, it is perfectly fine to block their comments.

As for plain old negative comments: you should look forward to them. They’re not always fun to read, but these are people bothering to tell you how you’re falling short. As I said above, listen and learn.

Mark McGuiness wrote about why he’s changed from a Twitter skeptic to a Twitter advocate; like Mark, I initially reacted to the notion of Twitter with the thought, “Good grief, that sounds horrifying.” And he’s nicely summed up the reasons that I’ve come to use and appreciate it.

There was a period when Twitter was becoming popular but hadn’t quite taken off when we were deluged with blog posts explaining the marketing applications of Twitter, most of which were quite silly. (There was actually one suggesting that people could order their beers at a ball park via Twitter, an excellent example of using technology to break something that works.)

Mark’s post steers clear of all that and explains the value of Twitter for what it does uniquely; if you’re wondering if you should dip a toe into the Twitter stream, give it a read.

Will you?

If only!

That’s one of the implications of this look at the state of online social media from The Economist. Comparing Microsoft’s acquisition of Hotmail years ago, and AOL’s recent purchase of Bebo, they write:

Both deals, in their respective decades, illustrate a great paradox of the internet in that the premise underlying them is precisely half right and half wrong. The correct half is that a next big thing—web-mail then, social networking now—can indeed quickly become something that consumers expect from their favourite web portal. The non sequitur is to assume that the new service will be a revenue-generating business in its own right.

The article talks about the problems with trying to get money out of running a social networking site, but a larger issue is raised: are these attempts at turning interactions into money fundamentally at odds with a user-centric model of online social media?

But should users really have to visit a specific website to do this sort of thing? “We will look back to 2008 and think it archaic and quaint that we had to go to a destination like Facebook or LinkedIn to be social,” says Charlene Li at Forrester Research, a consultancy. Future social networks, she thinks, “will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be.” No more logging on to Facebook just to see the “news feed” of updates from your friends; instead it will come straight to your e-mail inbox, RSS reader or instant messenger. No need to upload photos to Facebook to show them to friends, since those with privacy permissions in your electronic address book can automatically get them.

The problem with today’s social networks is that they are often closed to the outside web. The big networks have decided to be “open” toward independent programmers, to encourage them to write fun new software for them. But they are reluctant to become equally open towards their users, because the networks’ lofty valuations depend on maximising their page views—so they maintain a tight grip on their users’ information, to ensure that they keep coming back. As a result, avid internet users often maintain separate accounts on several social networks, instant-messaging services, photo-sharing and blogging sites, and usually cannot even send simple messages from one to the other. They must invite the same friends to each service separately. It is a drag.

That’s putting it kindly. Moreover, it might distort the actual value of these services to users:

This kind of social intelligence can be applied across many services on the open web. Better yet, if there is no pressure to make a business out of it, it can remain intimate and discreet. Facebook has an economic incentive to publish ever more data about its users, says Mr Ascher, whereas Thunderbird, which is an open-source project, can let users minimise what they share. Social networking may end up being everywhere, and yet nowhere.

(If the reference to Thunderbird seems odd, it’s because it follows a passage in which the writer notes that email accounts may be a logical home for the social graph, given how many of our interactions pass through them.)

Charlene Li’s “social media are like air” notion is become more credible as we’re bombarded by a not just social networks - from the all-purpose Facebooks and MySpaces to specialized sites - but services to filter and aggregate what’s in those other networks. Now and then someone hits one out of the park, because they combine the social graph with the ability to do something compelling. Twitter would be an example of this.

Mostly, though, it’s starting to feel like clutter. Clutter with some very neat things scattered around in it, of course, but more options and services than any typical user can possible deal with.

The possibility of launching the next cool social networking site and making money off it will bring new entrants in, of course. But one must wonder if this is going to pay off for users, or if a different approach is needed.

David Murray wrote about his initial Twitter experiences. He’s even more skeptical than I was about it.

There are some good insights there. As I’ve said before, if your reaction to Twitter is “Why? Why?” the best thing to do is to dive in and experience t. Even if you never bother with it again, you’ll better understand what people are doing with it.

(See also: How to Twitter)

Geoff Livingston at the Buzz Bin asks a good question:

The brochure approach doesn’t work. We know that. So blogs, podcasts and new social content has been added to the conventional web site, but the conversation is usually buried on sites as a simple link. Why bother? Why not reverse things and make brochure content a simple link, and the social content the heart of the web page?

Why not, indeed? (Ih fact, this site replaced a more static site that linked to a blog, so obviously I’m in agreement with the idea that Geoff is talking about here.)

What I’ve done and what Geoff suggests - his post is titled, “Tear Down the Web Site” - is probably a good idea for a lot of companies. My own caveat is this: before you start tearing down your web site for any reason, make sure you’ve got a customer-centric answer for the most fundamental web business question: “What is my site for?”

Note that I said “a customer-centric answer.” Answers that do not qualify include, “To increase revenue for our core product line,” “to raise the profile of our consulting business,” or “to make us feel really good about the web spend.”

If you were a customer, why would you come to your web site? What would you be looking? What would you want to do when you got there? What unexpected content would be valuable to you?

If it’s what is there on the home page right now, social or not, don’t tear it down. But if it’s not, start making changes.

And remember social content to the front does not, by the way, necessarily mean tearing anything down. The web is a world of continuous improvement, and if you’ve identified multiple critical uses for your site, perhaps for different segments of visitors, you may want to try increasing the prominence of buried content - for example, making the social content very prominent while providing lots of visibility for the always-important online support or retail sections.

And this must always be said: measure. Look at web analytics data. Do surveys. Observe user experiences as well as the clickstream - are people finding what they want?

For most organizations, making social content more prominent is probably a good idea. Just make it part of your ongoing efforts to measure and improve your site’s performance for your visitors.

Debbie Weil argues that we shouldn’t be talking about the ROI of social media, but rather the return on influence. Why? She says:

Short answer: because the return is soft. The benefits of incorporating social media strategies into your marketing are real (and can no longer be ignored) but they’re not normally measured in dollars. Like PR, you say? Yes and no.

Social media, which includes corporate blogging, is still so new for many marketers that it occupies a niche outside corporate PR or interactive marketing (the latter still a code phrase for online advertising or email marketing, neither of which is particularly interactive).

Second short answer (which ties in with the first)… because social media is a new phenomenon for which we are still developing metrics and measurement. There isn’t agreement yet on what these metrics should be. Velocity? Engagement? Conversation index? Reach? Community? Some combination. Whatever you choose, it’s hard to compute a dollar or numerical value.

This is an important topic and Debbie offers some interesting thoughts in the ongoing conversation about it. How do we measure this stuff? It’s a good question that has got to be answered any time that you’re making a case for devoting business resources to an activity.

As the conversation unfolds (and Debbie is absolutely right that for something so new, there’s no definitive answer), I find myself wondering how much it’s being shaped by a generation of marketers accustomed to having lots of data. As a group, marketers have become analytics junkies; we have access to tons of data about clicks on our ads, activity on our web sites, conversions from different market segments, and so on. And that’s great stuff. (It’s not enough, which is a whole other topic, but it’s great to have.)

But for those of us who remember when data was harder to come by, the discussion of social media ROI is eerily familiar. What was the ROI on a year’s worth of print ads in a specialized professional journal? Broadcast ads? A great PR program?

It’s challenging, even today, to tie activity to revenue. Sure, you can dive into a pile of clickstream data and see some people who are doing just what you want: coming to your web site from that AdWords add and following a neat path to the shopping cart or information request form. But more often customers have this maddening habit of doing what they want to do: coming to your site, looking around, and leaving. Coming back the next day. Sending a link to their boss or their assistant. Calling you on the phone and not bothering to tell you how they found you. (Darn customers!)

Pre-web, it was even harder. And I think that post-interruption-marketing, it’s going to get harder again.

I remember lots of discussions of the value of our marketing spend in the late 80s and early 90s that boiled down to, “We can’t identify specific deals that came from the ads in the The Journal of Conceptual Widget Engineering, but we know that our customers are influenced by them.”

What it often comes down to is soft measurements. After six months of the PR campaign, recognition of our key brand attributes was up 20% in the target demographic. When we stopped running the ads, inquiries dropped 10%. And of course the broader studies that showed that companies with consistent advertising program were, in the long term, more profitable than those who didn’t. (Usually proudly presented to us by the sales rep from a publication.)

Remember, soft measurements are fuzzy measurements. They are measurements of factors that affect revenue and profitability, but do not offer us a neat activity-revenue-profit chain of events.

For marketers who grew up with an ocean of data, this is likely to be frustrating. For those of us who didn’t, it’s likely to be familiar. And no doubt at some point someone will quip, “I know that half my social media budget is wasted, but I don’t know which half!”

I’m not suggesting that we give up on developing solid measurements of social media ROI, of course. I’m just pointing out that more clickstream data is unlikely to provide those measures, and we’re going to have t think creatively about how we measure, and how we present those measurements to business decision makers. Think soft!