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Twitter hash-tags have lost their mojo.

Posted on by Billy Tucker

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I spoke at iStrategy some time back in Melbourne and was blown away by the level of engagement from the Audience via Twitter, by far the most hash-tagged tweets I have ever seen. My iPad twitter ap was alive the entire time I was speaking with real time commentary about my presentation, can’t beat good-honest real-time feedback!

Only, it wasn’t.

I felt the entire time that Twitter and particularly the use of a hash-tag had lost its mojo. Previous when I have been speaking there has been a real balance to the Twitter feedback, some great, some not so great, and some just plain old brutal. But not this time. In fact, I don’t think there was a single tweet that could be euphemised as “brutally honest”. I suspect the medium is just too prolific.

In a conference of the size of iStrategy, which numbered around 300 delegates, there’s nowhere to hide and worse still there is a very good chance that the speaker you have just appraised will know what was said and by whom. And no one wants a possible confrontation!

As a speaker at the conference I wanted that brutal feedback, and I was looking for it real time to make adjustments to my session. But it didn’t come. I’d appreciate any suggestion that my talk was perfect, however I saw some sessions that were quite poor yet no negative tweets emerged!

I think we need to bring some anonymity back to twitter, at least find some other way to harvest the ugliest of commentary. Or accept that feedback is a gift, good, bad or ugly!

Will email communication really go the way of snail mail?

Posted on by Billy Tucker

I clearly do have strong views ont he subject! As does the ABS who report that only 80% of 17 – 24’s actually have an email address.

Music Media and Madness's avatarMusicMediaMadness.com

As part of the “Get Schmart” 2012 Marketing Conference Billy Tucker, owner of data consultancy 57 Signals, believes that email will increasingly become a redundant form of communication in the retail world. Despite the incredible penetration of email in our society Billy believes that the under twenties demographic are increasingly using social media as their preferred platform of communication. As he puts it “If you’re in the email business, reaching that audience is going to be hard and getting harder.”  Find out more by watching the video below and checking out more on the website www.getschmart.com.au

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Corporate Risk and the untold impact of Social

Posted on by Billy Tucker

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I spoke at a great business breakfast recently about the impact of social on commerce in Australia and was struck by how traditional businesses can find sound reasoning not to engage in social conversation.

The key objection I heard was around Risk, which is interesting given how big business currently thinks about the notion of Risk.

Risk Management is defined as the identification, assessment and prioritization of risks, coupled with coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events.

Commercial exposure from unfortunate events is inevitable, and in a world of Twitter and Facebook the pace of at which that Risk manifests is astonishing. The viral nature of Social therefore undermines the traditional view of Risk mitigation and damage control – so the first thing big business has to do is acknowledge that the world has already changed, they just haven’t caught up yet.

We know that people have an inherent desire to share, regardless of the sentiment.  If a business has no means to monitor/control the conversation, that’s where the risk exists. And establishing a social platforms early is the only answer.

If your customers are worried, give them a platform to share their concerns, make them feel like they are heard, while you monitor and moderate the conversation. Take some control of the discussion. If they are angry, frustrated or even delighted, give them a platform to engage and share.

There is no reason why the conversation platform you provide can’t operate with strict rules of engagement and therefore the existing risk framework. Sure there are NEW RISKS attached to social engagement, but they exist already, start mitigating these new risks before the unfortunate event you fear most.

Five key truths about Social engagement:

•Your customers will find very effective ways to broadcast “feedback” about you online whether you like it or not

•You can and should measure the sentiment of your target Audience, engage them and give them a platform, Radian6 and People Browsr’s Kred are exceptional platforms

•Monitor and moderate the conversation, but never astrosurf

•Social brings New Risk to business, get used to it!

•It’s prudent to provide a platform BEFORE the event you fear the most happens

The issue I describe here around the inevitability of social engagement is told well by the history of a UK Cable company NTL (now Virgin) and its relationship with a consumer lobby group nthellworld in 2000, worth a read.