Tag Archives: twitter

A Note on Authenticity and Social Media

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Last week at the #BASHH (Big Ass Social Happy Hour) event that helped kick off South By Southwest Interactive 2011, I had an interesting conversation with Wesley Faulkner about authenticity.

I’ve read Wesley’s blog for a while now, and he covers some rather interesting topics on there. He has done everything from commenting on new mobile technologies, to interviewing the leadership at Klout, to commenting on his personal interactions with folks he meets online.

One refreshing thing about Wesley is that he aspires to be authentic at all times, through all mediums including in-person. We chatted briefly about this very topic, and both agreed that authenticity is the most important thing you can do to establish and sustain trust online. You have to be yourself at all costs.

Unfortunately, not everyone you encounter online is truly who you would expect once you meet them IRL.

Zappos – Authentic or Not?

Give a read to his blog post that documents his experience at a Zappos event in October. Zappos CEO Tony Hseih himself was presenting, so Wesley was excited to get a chance to hear him first hand. What followed was disappointment.

Most apparently, Mr. Hseih was nowhere near the energetic enthusiast he appeared to be online. Of course, a book tour can take a lot out of you. So Wesley introduced himself and commented about a Twitter conversation he had had recently with Tony. He then met Tony’s “stand-in”, Mimi, and began to question the authenticity of the whole operation.

Tony Hseih of Zappo's

Why Authenticity Is So Critical

Wesley’s blog post is important, but not because it calls out Zappos or Tony Hseih.

This is important because it turns the equation around completely. It gives us the view from the other side – showing how it feels to meet someone who is nowhere near what you expect of them after seeing them online.

For a thought leader whose message relies on the concepts of pursuing happiness and engaging with customers, it is crucial to “walk the walk”. Be who you say you are, right? But it gets worse…especially when you learn that they don’t even manage their own Twitter account.

A Lesson in Authenticity

The problem with all of this jockeying is that is compromises the most important variable in the whole equation – trust.
It’s not just about whether we like you; it’s about whether we can count on you to be the same person when we read your book, follow your tweets, hire you to do a keynote speech, and come up to you in public to shake your hand.

How disappointing would it be to learn that one of your all time favorite books by one of your all time favorite thought leaders was actually written by a college intern or a freelance graduate student? That’s what it is like when you hire a ghost tweeter to “be authentic” for you, so you can focus on more important things.

Be who you are. All the time. You can’t hide behind a keyboard for the rest of your life, so get over yourself and be real.

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Who else has run into this problem? Let’s make this a group post! Add your own horror stories to the comments below. Feel free to sanitize the names and faces if you prefer, but share away!

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Privacy and Social Media: Something is Amiss

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Privacy has been a sizzling hot topic for social media users over the past couple of years. The various services and websites have all taken unique approaches to privacy, some catering more to the users, and others taking liberties to leave doors open for future business and revenue opportunities.

This week, two separate topics came to my attention, both related to privacy, and I absolutely felt it necessary to share and comment here on Return On Now.

Careful Who You “Friend”

Breaking news from Raw Story this week reported that the federal government has had “persona” software commissioned. This software is to be used for “classified social media activities.” Essentially, this software can allow a user / company / government to create small (or large) armies of “virtual personas”. To top it off, these virtual personas are not only generated, but built out with additional information like life/work/education history, and even faux geo-location information such as physical check-ins on location based services.

Now, I’m not one to throw stones before understanding the full story, but doesn’t this sound a bit concerning to you? Specific issues I have with this:

  1. This is an outright violation of privacy when used to collect information about social media users.
  2. Since social media is heavily influenced by activity, buzz, viral sharing, etc., this opens a door to manipulation of public opinion and even the very messages to which we are exposed.
  3. It’s just plain deceptive! [Y'know, the kind of stuff that would've resulted in detention in our school days.]

As concerning as this may be, we really have no way to respond except for using common sense. Don’t say anything on social media that you wouldn’t announce publicly. Exhibit control when reacting to emotional topics. And most importantly of all, only accept friend requests from people you actually know.

Facebook Friend Request from Barley Jang

Just this week, I got a friend request on Facebook from someone named Barley Jang. I’ve never heard of the name, they have no photo to show me who they are, and we have no friends in common…not a single one! In fact, after seeing the above article and receiving this request, Ms. Jang (or faux person extraordinaire, perhaps?) served as inspiration for this blog post. So at least there’s that.

But I’m still clicking “Not Now” on that one just to be safe. [Barley, if you are a real person, please reach out to me directly and I will happily eat my words.]

Petition to Google and Facebook

You may or may not be familiar with a group called Demand Progress, but you should most certainly be aware of their current hot button. Basically, Demand Progress runs online campaigns to raise awareness of what is going on in the “back room” of Congress, and helps the public get a voice in such activities.

Their current campaign is aimed at Google and Facebook. According to the website, both companies hand over personal data to the federal government for any legal request, but without ever even notifying the user of the request in the first place!

If you recall, Twitter stood firm about not revealing user information when the WikiLeaks fiasco came to a head. What did they do? After receiving the request, Twitter first contacted the users to notify them of it. Regardless of how the situation turns out, Julian Assange and the whole team at WikiLeaks had a fair chance to challenge the request before the data was handed over.

Don’t you want the same thing for your own personal data? It’s not about guilty or innocent, it’s about personal rights.

If you want to have your voice heard, sign the petition on the Demand Progress website today.

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6 Questions To Test Credibility of Content in a Social World

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Everyone out there is talking about social media, the new opportunities and risks it poses, and how to best use it. In response, your peers have begun an aggressive push to figure out what the various tools, sites, and techniques can offer their business. This is a great thing, one that I’ve been cheering on since the start.

In reality, we’ve only taken baby steps toward really getting this all figured out in both a personal and business context. With so much left to learn and so many different opinions about this fast-changing area, it’s easy to get carried away with the excitement of mastering some new tricks.

“Generate content. Generate more content. Be sure it’s relevant. The eyeballs will come!”

What about the “eyeballs”? Sure, relevant content written in a compelling manner will attract attention. That should make the information sources happy. Who is looking out for the consumers of the content?

Citizen Journalism: Fact Vs. Opinion

Citizen Journalism: If We All Blog, Who Is Credible?In case you are unfamiliar with the term, Citizen Journalism involves the “public” taking an active role in researching, analyzing, summarizing, and sharing new, information, data, gossip, multimedia, etc. that other members of the public would want to consume and/or discuss. If you think about all of the social media tools available to us — bookmarking, blogging, networking, content sharing — they are geared toward exactly that means.

This sort of empowerment of voice is truly a breakthrough that the Internet has been so kind as to provide us. But how would one know when something is “true” or “correct”? Sure, there are easy ways to do this based on public opinion, but then again, does popularity really prove anything, except the fact that a writer can get and hold your attention?

It is essential that you take a critical eye toward everything you read online. Even the stuff written by the “experts” or “thought leaders”. The following is a quick 6-question guide for completing a “stink test” on anything you read online.

Do I know and trust them already?

This is the no-brainer, and the premise behind Google Caffeine. If you know someone, their intelligence level, their credibility and trustworthiness, and their ability to assimilate information, why wouldn’t you put credence into their thoughts and opinions? If they are trustworthy and dependable, you know they won’t bend the truth just to make a point. And if you know them, you likely also know what their area of specialty is, which should significantly enhance your confidence in their writings on said topic.

Whether you are a fan of Caffeine (the search logic, not the stimulant) or not, it was built on a sound assumption that I anticipate will be proven useful. Don’t just search for me based on cryptic formulas and keywords; also filter those results for the colleagues and friends with whom I’ve already established a base level of credibility.

Was it recommended to me by someone I know and trust?

Extending out one more degree away from you (even Kevin Bacon would be proud), you don’t have to necessarily know someone personally to quickly establish credibility. When a trusted contact of mine makes a recommendation, I take it at face value. If you are like most of us, you likely do the same.

Think about Twitter for a moment. They’ve taken this concept and run with it. For example…Retweets, Lists, and even Follow Friday. Those traditions are all various methods of connecting people to each other (or to each other’s content) via recommendation. They are popular for a reason, and this is it.

Are they known as a reliable source?

This is where reputation comes into play. The first two tests are the most obvious and easiest to answer. For anyone who doesn’t make it through those filters, it makes sense to then consider public opinion. Are they a well-respected thought leader, a’la Chris Brogan (Social Media), Erin Jacobs (IT and Information Security), or Seth Godin (Marketing Strategies)? Do many of their peers seem to link to them?

It is important to consider whether someone is popular because they are already in established media, or whether they were popular on their own right before going in print or on the radio/television. All the three examples above established strong personal identities on their own merit. That’s what you need to look for.

What else have they written or said?

Perhaps the person under question for you is an unknown commodity, to you, your peers, and to the general public. Don’t just assume that means their opinions are not important. If you like a piece they’ve written, take a few moments to peruse more of their work. Share some of the “eyeball” love! You just might be the person whom your peers will trust when they are evaluating the same individual’s work in the near future.

What are the top minds in the space saying?

Hmmm, so you and your peers don’t know the person, they aren’t an established thought leader or information source, and you’ve read more of their work…but you still can’t determine the difference between fact or “quack”.

Compare notes. Do a quick search on the topic under question. See what others are saying. Is this a popular opinion or a unique one? Do you agree with popular opinion or not? Perhaps the masses are still singing the same old song while this one person truly gets it! Or perhaps the writing was hammered out while under a peyote-induced haze. This is where you need to really insert some of your own rationale into the process, as in…

What does my gut tell me?

That’s right. There is no perfect system, but at the end of the day, what do you really think? Did the writing move you to change your mind about something? Is that a sensible reaction or not? This isn’t saying to blindly accept something as fact, but quite the opposite. By this point, you’ve done enough consideration of whether they are credible or not. You’ve seen what peers, experts, and popular opinion think about them or the topic. Read, analyze, draw your own conclusions, and move on. Or maybe you can just post your thoughts to a blog, citizen journalism style!

Conclusion

Everyone is jumping on the citizen journalism bandwagon these days. That can be a great thing, but you want to be sure to use some calculated filtering of what you read out there. This isn’t just limited to blogs and social media; be critical of the established media as well.

What approach do you use with user-generated content? Do you tend to believe everything, nothing, or something in between? Do you have a better approach to the “stink test”? Fill me in!

Twitter: A New Kind Of Spam-bot

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Today, I finally took a moment to go through my list of followers on Twitter, hoping to uncover some great new tweeps with whom I could engage. When I started going through the list, I noticed a slew of new followers who had jumped on board in the past 48 hours. Great news, right?

Wrong.

There were close to 40 new followers since yesterday afternoon. Among them, I found over 30 questionable accounts.

Here is an excerpt from my list of followers:

Twitter: New Kind of Spam-Bot

See a pattern there?

The thing that jumped out to me first was the most recent update, which Twitter has been gracious enough to add to the snippets we see on our list of followers.  In each of the 30+ accounts, their most recent tweet is comprised of a mix of real and fake words, all strung together in a manner that says absolutely nothing.

You can also see a pattern in the Twitter handles being used. Two words combine with a random string of numbers, as in “relievedgrrl649″ and other (often very colorful as shown here) combinations that look to be easy to “cook up”. Simply reuse a two-word handle, generate a random number value, and you’re off spamming!

You may see some of these appear in your own list of followers. I took the time to block all of them today, but first I reviewed any other tweets they’ve made. In all cases, there were fewer than 5 tweets since the account was activated, the first tweet included a link to some “video” (porn anyone?), and they were following at least 200 tweeps (and followed by less than 100).

Avoid this new form of spam bot

Be on the lookout for this new wave of auto-spam. Hopefully Twitter can pinpoint the bot or API that is generating these malicious accounts, but in the meantime, be sure to use caution with whom you “follow back.”

Twitter: Follow Friday and Etiquette

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Twitter is, as many of you already know, one of my favorite social media toys available today. For those of us who are active on Twitter, we are all aware of a little tradition called Follow Friday.

Follow Friday TwitterIn case you don’t use Twitter or somehow managed to miss it, Follow Friday is a tradition where, every Friday, folks tweet about which other Twitter users are worth following and/or meeting. It’s actually quite simple in my opinion, but there are rather widely varying opinions about how and why you do it properly.

The original tradition dating back 2-3 years was a pretty simple concept – pick your most favorite Tweeters, recommend them, and give a quick blurb about why someone would want to follow. Over time, as the user base began to grow and folks went from having dozens or hundreds of followers to thousands, we started to see a change in behavior.

A little over a year ago, we started seeing a lot of people tweeting list of people to follow, with the #FollowFriday tag attached, of course. (If you don’t know about hashtags, take a moment to learn more.) As this further evolved over the past year or so, the tag changed from #FollowFriday to #FF to save room for another Twitter handle to be added. Makes sense, no?

Twitter “purists” (i.e. early adopters) reacted very negatively to the behavior. Lists of folks to follow did not add the right value they argued. People were taking a shortcut. It shows mass behavior, which is the antithesis of focusing on relationships over “push” messaging. These are all valid arguments.

But this all misses the point. Twitter is a service where you can microblog about whatever you want. You have every right to use the 140 characters for anything. Since it’s based on pure “opt in” (i.e. I choose to follow or unfollow you, or neither), the population can judge by their very behavior. Are people still following me, even if I do the list of users to spread the love more in my limited free time to do so? Sure. So in my opinion, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it.

My point: Don’t let people bark direction at you about how to use Twitter. Use common sense, listen to those with whom you’ve engaged, and simply behave in the way that best suits your style, your objectives, and the friends you’ve made online. Sure, there are things you want to shy away from on Twitter, but for the most part, have fun and try not to annoy people, and you’ll be fine.

Do you partake in #FF? Every week or intermittently? What do you think etiquette “should” be? Or should there just be freeform behavior of your choosing? I know some tweeps are passionate about this topic, so let me know what you think!

Social Media: Simplify to Reignite Your Social Network

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It finally happened to me. I never thought it would, but it sure did.

What am I talking about? Information Overload

Information Overload Social Media Networking SimplifyWe’ve seen a slew of blog posts, studies, articles, and general commentary about this phenomenon. There are even psychological analyses and studies on this topic. Surely you’ve seen the various viewpoints…those who think our newly adopted, manic multi-tasking culture is a natural evolution, and those who think we were never meant to operate in this fashion. The Millennials / Net Generation / whatever you want to call the folks born from 1980 forward are experts at it. They operate differently, and they seem to have no problem with hopping from topic-to-topic, conversation-to-conversation, rapidly absorbing, filtering, and interpreting as many data points as they can possibly access.

Personally, I think it’s a natural evolution in behavior. As a species, we have always evolved to take advantage of new innovations. In fact, there’s a little concept we call Darwinism that explains why certain members of each species manage to survive over the long term, and why others do not. If you can’t keep up, you get left behind, as sad as that reality may be.

But there’s another issue here. That model of evolution makes a lot of sense, but it has historically conspired over extended periods of time, decades, centuries, even millenniums. But now we are making large-scale advancements between generations and even decades. Many Baby Boomers simply don’t understand or condone the younger sect’s way of operating. That doesn’t make them superior or more right. After all, they were raised in a different time where mass media was the primary form of communications. That medium, by its very nature, is a single stream of content on which you need to focus.

I find myself in an odd between state, where I can often be much more productive via focusing, but where my normal mode of operation is fragmented like the younger group.

A couple of things changed that put me over the tipping point.

First, I decided to dabble with foursquare over the course of several months. My initial reaction to the service was negative. Thoughts of an Orwellian future filled my head on first glance. Why do I want to advertise where I am? And as we’ve seen, why advertise where I am not? Well, the repeated advice from social media “gurus” that I needed to get on the Geolocation train finally broke me down and I started to play the game. Those of you who know me personally have already likely heard about my concerns, even while I was using it (probably a mad effort to rationalize it for myself, actually).

Second, my job changed a bit and became significantly more busy. Like 14 trade shows in 4 months busy, on top of my existing messaging, social media, and other responsibilities. I also inherited all of MarCom for Anue Systems.

Of course, sooner or later, something had to give. I was already juggling a full time job, family, blogging, and a list of other items. But a couple of weeks ago, I got this mad feeling to go hide under a rock. Yep, it was full-on Information Overload.

So I had to make a very important choice: Simplify.

Go cold turkey on foursquare.

Start removing those I follow on Twitter with whom I have no relationship to speak of or who provide no value to me. If they stop following, oh well. Quality over quantity, right?

Focus more on conversations rather than content. And strongly focus on real people in my locale who I can meet and engage with offline. This was the most refreshing of all of these changes!

Now I feel much better. Call it a social media spring cleaning. It’s something we should make a habit.

How is social media treating you? Are you still getting the same value out of it? Could your activities use a fresh spring cleaning? Have you ever experienced Information Overload? Tell me your story in the comments. If I get some good enough conversation going, I’ll assemble them into a post for my Posterous page to share with the world!

Twitter URL Shortener: Good Response to Phishing

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Twitter, social mediaThe news sort of came out a bit under the radar, but Twitter announced a very interesting change they are implementing on their blog (March 9, 2010). Positioned as a response to phishing, they will be changing URLs in Direct Messages to their own twt.tl shortened redirects. Essentially, they can then track for bad behavior and block the URL altogether if the target web page  is found to be malicious.

I applaud them for taking some action to integrate the security layer within their own infrastructure, as it is clear that more users than we’d like to admit can be “social engineered” to click on almost anything. No other URL shortener service has shown an ability to build in the needed level of control, and who would be able to make this work better than Twitter itself?

The question remains open as to where they intend to take this newfound capability in the future. And sure, if it can be used for DMs, why not have it available for all messages.  This all comes down to how the new service is offered. Currently, it appears to be standard on all URLs in DMs, regardless whether they were shortened or not beforehand. If this were to become part of every tweet as well, would it be optional or the de facto shortener in all cases?

Here is the rub: sometimes you have to make tradeoffs for security purposes. Do we really lose anything important if they standardize on their own shortener, so long as we can still get all of the metrics and other “bells and whistles” we currently get via other tools? If it helps them proactively maintain a more secure environment on Twitter, I’m willing to make that sacrifice. Then again, I’m not on there trying to fool tweeps into clicking links to mischievous places.

I’ve seen various opinions out there, some in favor and some more cautious about Twitter having their own shortener. What’s your take on it? Fear of Big Brother or just another smart way to control misbehavior?

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Cheers to local fave @Wesley83 (Wesley Faulkner) for sharing Twitter Alters Some Links to Improve Security (by Peter Kafka) on his Posterous page. That’s where I first learned the news, and he keeps a great personal blog on there.

Social Media: Think Before You Tweet

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Last week while traveling to San Francisco for the RSA Conference 2010, I finally took the time to figure out how to use TwitPic from my mobile phone. It was like a revelation! For those of you who follow me, you may have seen as I posted various photos from the trip out there, my dinner the first night, etc. I had a shiny new toy!

Then on Monday night during the opening reception, the show was relatively slow. You see, they open the show with a two-hour open Expo, and the organizers treat attendees to beer, wine, and food. Because of the treats and eats, very few of the attendees are actually interested in engaging in business-related discussion of any sort. Of course, as an exhibitor (@AnueSystems, actually), we are required to man the booth in case we are approached by anyone with questions or interest in our products.

Since we were mostly standing around looking for some meaningful conversations to crop up, I decided to partake in one of my favorite pastimes when out in public: people-watching. RSA presents a very interesting range of people from all around the world. There were business types in suits, hard-core security techs in t-shirts and jeans, booth talent in various getups, marketing and sales folks in company branded attire, and just about anything else you can imagine.

About an hour into the show, a woman approached the booth across from us in a very peculiar outfit. In fact, it looked as though she were dressed by a color blind, stylistically-challenged imp! We had a nice chuckle among our group, and of course we snapped a couple of photos. Then it dawned on me…I had to share this one on Twitter. It would surely elicit some nice laughs by my online friends, so I opened up email and teed it up to send with the following message included: “RSA 2010: Not a fashion conference”. After a few minutes, I had second thoughts about whether this was a smart thing to do, but it appeared the email had already sent, so I was all in.

The next day while having lunch with Jennifer Leggio (@mediaphyter), Social Business blogger for ZDnet, I shared this story to see what she thought. Her reply? “What if that is one of your customers?” Of course, I was just about certain it was not, but as I pondered her feedback further, I grew more and more concerned about doing something so stupid without thinking first. Now, I’m a guy who is no stranger to the taste of my foot, but at this point in my life, I’m most certainly too old to blame such a gaff on the folly of youth.

That night, I logged into Twitter to see what maelstrom of feedback I may have gotten to the picture, and it unexplainably wasn’t showing up in my stream. I was befuddled! Can it be…did the email never in fact deliver? So I went to TwitPic and logged in, and alas! I did manage to successfully cancel the transmission, which was the result of either luck or badly-needed common sense [maybe a little bit of both].

Whew, what a close call. For those of you who know me, you’re aware that I’m always up for a good laugh, but seldomly in such a disrespectful way to fellow professionals (and yes, even those with no fashion sense deserve respect on an intellectual and business level). I try very hard to foster productive and mutually beneficial relationships. In fact, networking is one of the most important things I do outside of work and spending time with my family.

But in one fell swoop, I nearly let the my fervor for a newfound toy throw me off my course. Never forget, social networking is still about people first. Anything you say or post online is available for public consumption, and with your “it’s me” stamp of approval permanently attached. Sites, tools, software, and cool apps are great, but they are just methods by which to interact with real people. Think about how it might affect the person on the other end, and in this case, the “butt” of the joke. It’s just not worth doing something potentially offensive for a cheap laugh. Oh yeah, and if you’re in the job market, be sure your Facebook account won’t scare off your interviewer. If you don’t think they are looking, think again.

Special thanks to @Mediaphyter for her voice of reason. If you haven’t seen her work, I highly recommend you take a moment to do so.

On that note, namaste my friends.

Fantasy Sports: Social Networking or Time-Wasting?

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Most of you likely looked at the title of this post and wondered, “Tommy, what the heck are you talking about? Fantasy Sports is not social networking.”

On the surface, it’s easy to see why the game could be viewed that way. But I’m here to tell you that fantasy sports are as much a vehicle for social networking as Facebook, Flickr, and even foursquare / gowalla.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game, let me elaborate. In its most simple format, 10-12 participants join a league before the season starts. Pretty much every major sport has a fantasy game associated with it. Prior to the first day of the season, the team owners get together in person or online to draft teams of real players from real teams, assembling a lineup in accordance with the league rules. Then, when the season starts, they start or sit players depending on a variety of factors (healthy vs. injured, good vs. bad matchups, etc.). Teams then receive credit for the actual statistics each player tallies. The overall goal is to end the season as the best team in the standings or to win the playoffs, depending on how the league is set up.

To many of you, this may sound rather pointless. In fact, there’s even a rebellion by “Fantasy Widows” as some have called them (you can learn more about on the Women Against Fantasy Sports website, complete with a line of related apparel). But these games play a role much more important than killing time and maybe blowing a little cash.

Believe it or not, fantasy sports are every bit a vehicle for social networking that many of the leading services are. Let’s take a quick moment to look at some attributes of the game that lead me to this conclusion.

  1. Tribe-based – All activities happen in pre-determined leagues where all the participants agree to play within the same scoring system, by the same rules, using the same tools and features. This sounds a whole lot like my friends on official social media sites.
  2. Online - Although the first fantasy game, Fantasy Baseball, was originally administered by avid fans using box scores from their local newspaper, the game has migrated completely online. So what if it started as a truly social activity and not a cool new web toy. It was social before it was online, so it most certainly qualifies.
  3. Interactive - Fantasy sports are all about the ongoing activities you must undertake to win a league. All of the team managers must take part in a live draft, with full chat functionality in the online draft room. Then, the season is  a mix of lineup decisions, trade negotiations, and adding and dropping players from the free agent list (a.k.a. the list of players who are not already on a team).
  4. Real-time – If anything is real-time, fantasy sports fit the bill. Games happen every day or every week, and real-time scoring is a must for the hardcore fantasy sports players. Team rosters can be adjusted in many ways on a daily basis. Team owners can work out trades at will, post messages in a threaded format (like blog comments), talk smack right on their team pages, and email back and forth between participants. Sure, the bulk of the action happens during live games, but whom among you spends 24 hours a day on social media sites anyway?
  5. Content-heavy – An entire industry has been built around fantasy sports blogging, analysis, advice, products, and games. Breaking news is a huge piece of this puzzle, and tools like Twitter and Facebook now play major roles in the dissemination of real-time player-related information. If you don’t believe me, you should have been paying attention to the chatter on Twitter leading up to the NBA trade deadline on February 18.

I know there are as many perspectives on this topic as there are fantasy games to choose from. What is your opinion? Do you play fantasy sports? Do you see it as a social networking activity? Is it just gambling, or old fashion bonding and honest fun? Let’s get a good conversation going in the comments, because I think it’s due time that fantasy sports gets the positive press it deserves.

For more information about the fantasy sports industry itself, read more from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association website. Industry writers also have their own Fantasy Sports Writers Association, of which I am a proud member.

Social Media: It CAN be measured too!

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If you keep up with the local Austin startup scene or even with new social media services as they pop up, then surely you saw the announcement from Spredfast about their Social Media Campaign Management Dashboard product. It would easy to dismiss this as just another hype-laden announcement about a new social media tool, but that would be rather short-sighted in this case.

Ken Cho headshotI recently had the opportunity to spend upward of two hours on the phone with co-founder Kenneth Cho (virtual high-five to another UT-Austin MBA Alum!), first to learn the philosophy and history behind the product, and then to take a guided tour through it firsthand. What I learned is that these guys “get it”, and the best is yet to come.

You see, this product is an evolution of Ken and his partner, Scott McCaskill’s, previous venture, Social Agency. The previous organization was focused on actually managing the social media campaigns themselves on behalf of their large business clients. Given the slow adoption of social media to date in the enterprise space, Social Agency was able to do very well in that capacity. Almost too well; they found themselves overwhelmed with managing a variety of disparate tools and services on behalf of their clientele.

So the SpredFast concept was borne. SpredFast is intended to be a tool for social media campaign execution and engagement. What does that mean? They built it to help with getting messages out, scheduling them, tying in the multiple channels, and publishing to those channels (channels in this product are the multiple SocMed “tools” out there such as Twitter, Facebook, etc.). But they didn’t stop there, because there are free tools for many of these activities  (e.g. HootSuite, my personal favorite), and their intent was to monetize the product to create a real business (novel, huh?).

I must say, for a first release of the product, what I saw holds a great deal of promise.

SpredFast GUIThe first impressive thing you notice is the intuitive GUI and seamless integration across the various tools that are included on the first release (more to be added in the future) – most notably Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr.  You can manage all tweets, status updates, video postings, and photographs from right within the SpredFast product, including RTs and the like.

Even more importantly, they listened to what we’ve all been screaming about and built a measurement system right into the product. The model, while not yet a full ROI calculation, should prove helpful for measuring the impact of your efforts on the conversation and the marketplace. And all statistics should be fully accurate, since the product uses APIs to collect the data directly from each channel.

The model as it stands today includes three key areas as follows:

  1. Engagement - A measurement of what actions result from your ongoing social media activities. This metric includes number of replies, comments, Re-Tweets, bit.ly clicks, Facebook “likes”, and many other affinity-related behaviors.
  2. Reach – A straightforward count of how many people your social media campaign is, well, reaching. Metrics include number of followers, Youtube subscribers, Facebook fans, and other standard counting numbers associated with “direct reach” (i.e. being connected to you or your brand directly). In the next revision of the product, they are even considering adding extended reach indicators such as friends-of-friends or followers-of-followers.
  3. Activity – Quite literally, this is a measure of how many things you are doing on the various channels, including things like number of messages, tweets, and links that are published through a particular campaign.

SpredFast Three Metrics

For now, these indicators are most useful in telling you how influential your activities are (Reach), and then helping you benchmark whether your level of Activity is generating the appropriate level of Engagement. If your Activity/Engagement ratio is too high or too low, you either need to change the level of activity or change the actual approach, because something is not working as intended. Return-on-investment? That would be a stretch in this iteration, but what it can do it show a return-on-activity in the form of engagement.

In our extensive conversation, we dug pretty deeply into philosophies about social media, where it fits, how important it was, and some key areas where this product can be built out to truly reach the vision that Ken and Scott have in mind. Of course, I won’t steal their thunder by going into too much of that detail here, but I do recommend that you give this product a look. Particularly for those of you in larger or mid-sized companies where social media is still a work-in-progress, it can offer a starting point for measuring and justifying your efforts.

What other tools have you seen out there that may rival this approach? Some of the established players do have similar models (as indicated in Aaron Strout’s guest post from last week), but who do you think is best poised to get this right? And most importantly, what do you want to see measured to better gauge whether your SocMed efforts are working or not? Let’s discuss, because the power of social comes from free sharing and discussion among us.