TWTRCON SF09

TWTRCON SF09 Through My Eyes and Ears

I am attending the TWTRCON SF09 today which is my second Twitter Conference this week. I will be blogging some updates and thoughts that come to my mind as the day unfolds. I am not going for a live blog of the conference, just wanting to share things that stick out to me. You can also check our my Twitter Stream: http://twitter.com/jeradhill

For the most part I really enjoyed TWTRCON. The speakers were great to hear from. I love hearing first hand how people are using this space to accomplish new things in their business. That was the core reason for me attending these conferences. I also attend to meet people and make contacts. TWTRCON had the type of people that I was looking to connect with. I understand that they put this conference together in less than 30 days which was not apparent. The conference was very professional and well marketed. Most of the speakers were able to get their messages across to us. The panels were well thought out and the combination of panelists meshed really well.

Flickr #TWTRCON Image Set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jtography/sets/72157619051926616/

Check back for more through out the day.

Laura Fitton – Founder of Pistachio Consulting: Introduction to TWTRCON09 and a basic intro to Twitter for business.

• Make it about your followers, not so much about you.
• Measure success not by follower count but by valuable conversations held.
• Use Bit.ly or other URL shortening service to track all URLs you post
• Companies should have landing pages (such as I do) that describe following policy and about info relevant to Twitter.
• Non Profits – Engage, get people involved. Share stories.
• Twitter helps you listen, something that gets harder as you and your business grow

*Just ordered an Eye-fi card so I can keep shooting photos with out removing my CF card.

The Hootsuite Owl is in the house!

Guy Kawasaki, Co-Founder of Alltop

• Not having a business model is the new business model
• I am not on Twitter to make friends. I am here to promote AllTop
• Most important to have an interesting Twitter Stream – has staff that writes just as Oprah does for her magazine.
• You go to Google to search, you go to Yahoo to do stuff. You do not spend much time at Google, you search and leave. Yahoo could build a Twitter like app and succeed.
• The initials at @guykawasaki’s tweets are the initials of the ghosts that posted the tweet. #twtrcon and they are all women. With that said, nobody @replies on his behalf or sends direct messages

This guy contrasts selling Twitter to selling off your daughter to sheiks. #OMFG #TWTRCON

Marketing at the speed of Twitter: Porter Gale – VP Marketing at Virgin America, Seth Greengurg – Media Director at Intuit, Jeramie McPeek – VP Phoenix Suns, Vicky Harres Akers – PR Newswire.

• Brands need to be more then a logo, they need to have a face as well.
• Connect with your users where they are. If that is Twitter or Facebook, be there
• Virgin America did not have any opposition to integrating Twitter into their communications. Found it important, understand that people want to know whats going on at Virgin and love getting updates
• Does @jetblue follow @virginamerica?
• Question: Since people are Tweeting from the sky does that mean that cell phones do not pose a threat to the airplane?
• Twitter is a great PR channel but on a more important level it allows people to share experience in real time with real time listeners. Everybody is listening
• The speed of Twitter is changing the time frame that you have to respond @virginamerica says channels are shifting so they can keep up with the expectation of Twitter users.
• VirginAmerica and Google are launching A Day in the Cloud, a cloud computing in the cloud interactive scavenger hunt.
• It’s about passion for us



• Deliver on your promise which means if your business is on Twitter you need to scale as the request for information comes in. When you create a corporate twitter profile you are letting the twitter public know that you wish to share life with them. Do what you have to do to connect with your customers.
• Assume nobody is an expert, just listen and learn
• Twitter is word of mouth marketing. Think about what you say, this is your chance to put out there things people may create discussions around
• Be active, you need to be seen, if you have a problem with that then go home! Fish where the fish are

CoTweet

• Task management and deployment for Twitter
• Allows brands to have multiple people communicating the brand
• Now in private beta

Operation Smile is using Twitter to bring the voice of their organization to the twitter masses. 140 Smiles is their campaign. http://140smiles.com Check out the competition they have going on.

Thought: What do you think trending does for website traffic, does trending in the top 10 result in web traffic?

David w/ Tech web – @dberlind – Unconference
Peoplebrowsr and Hootsuite shared their products with us.

Twitter to the Rescue! – Jeremy Pepper – Boingo Wireless, Ed Terpening – Wells Fargo, Frank Eliason – Comcast

• Frank – Anything I say represents Comcast regardless of the name of our twitter account. Building personal relationships in this space are important. Only hires people who are passionate to help others on the same level he is. Takes a personal approach to helping. Frank says it’s not about the influences, it’s about the customer.
• @comcastcares (Frank) just got called a #fail for not being scaleable.
• Jeremy – It is important to have a good life balance to keep from it becoming overwhelming.
• Ed – We know the ROI of solving a customer problem in a service business.
• Frank says that if a customer just is out to bash then you should agree to disagree. Don’t press them, let them speak and get it out of their system. Let the customer know that you are there when they are done venting. Remember, this is all live for everybody to see. Frank goes on to say that people blog and use Twitter because ultimately they want to be heard. Relate to the customer story.
• Never strive for followers

Your Brand is a Person – MC Hammer, Adventure Girl

Personal Branding Which of course is what I am passionate about!

• The difference between tweeting about having a beer and just having a beer can be perceived different. Be careful how you portray yourself online.
• Twitter has been brand extension for MC Hammer. MC Hammer says that he has changed over the years just as we all have. Social Media allows him to express the real Hammer for the world to see and take back control of who he is from the media.

My thought: Twitter is powerful, I took a pic of Hammer, the third one below. Posted it to Flickr, posted it to Twitter and has been viewed 500 times in the last 15 minutes.

More Photos

Tweeting for Dollars

Beth Mansfield – Carl’s Jr., Mike Prasad – Kogi BBQ, Stefanie Nelson – Dell Outlet
Group Question: Has Twitter made you any money? Beth: Yes, Stefanie: Yes, Mike: Hell Yes!

Twitterville Tales – Shel Israel

Shel is talking about how in Twitterville you talk about life and then sometimes business happens. People do not get on Twitter because they want to be marketed to, they want to connect with things they care about. We used to move to neighborhoods to organize ourselves around people we share interests with. Now the internet and Twitter allows us to create these neighborhoods all over the world with all sorts of people.

Shel is telling the story about @JamesBuck who was arrested while in Egypt. He started with 90 followers when he was there. The power of retweeting is what eventually got him released. James’ post “arrested” was interesting and took flight because it was about him. Shel is also sharing many other Twitter success stories that happened because of Social Media.

It Ate the Corporate Manual: Jeannette Gibson – Cisco, Richard Brewer Hay – Ebay, Brian Solis – FutureWorks

• Twitter is about those live conversations and micro feedback you can get instantaneously.
• Make IT your friend. Don’t block devices, let your people connect how they wish to connect.
• Brian says, “We are all ahead of the curve that are using this space now.”

As Twitter grows, negativity is going to grow. As a brand you should have a presence in the space so you can disarm as much of it as possible.

A Conversation With Twitter – Amamitra Banerji – Project Manager Twitter

I opted to make a bathroom run. I was at the 140 Twitter Conference last week and heard similar thoughts shared.

The Future of Twitter – Steve Rubel

Ideas to make Twitter integrate more with our websites and marketing ventures.

• Aggregation Tools
• Filtering
• Hyper Local
• OAuth
• Voting/Rating

Our communications online are going to continue to get more social.

More Photos

Let’s Cut to the Chase – Dave McClure: Startup Advisor, Jeremiah Owyang: Forrester, Paul Saffo: Stanford Media X

These guys spent most of their time correcting each other. Last panel of the day was a fail.

Thanks for visiting my post on TWTRCON SF09 – Twitter for Business – May 31, 2009.

Visit and share the Flickr set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jtography/sets/72157619051926616/