The Perfect Microsite… is now Social

I was reading this post:

http://wearesocial.net/blog/2009/04/death-microsite-act-4/

and was wondering why anyone thinks that Microsites are anything useful anyway. Most microsites exist to support a campaign and are temporary anyway.  The fact is that I don’t like them because they generally support an expensive marketing campaign and are essentially identikit anyway.  They’ll have some cool content, they’ll “hero” a brand and then there’ll be a “register” and a “send to a friend” type of thing.

Microsites have been dead a long time – Agencies just don’t know it

The thing that always amused me about microsites was how they generated traffic from all the wrong people. A large proportion of the traffic was from workers/friends at other agencies wondering what the agency that built it had just done. A large other part of the traffic was from those who received the campaign anyway, and so weren’t new customers.

Microsites start in the wrong place

Basically, social networks make the rules change so significantly, that Microsites become much less important (unless you are still working to the same metrics as 10 years ago – Hint: they’ve changed!).  It’s far more about who the audience is than what you are trying to promote.

Microsites (or their replacement) must now be social.What that means is yet to be understood as nobody has yet done a highly successful social campaign yet.  When it does, all I hope is that agencies don’t just do their usual “copy and screw it up” routine.

Marketing costs will reduce, Community Consulting will Increase

This is the key. The world will change to be much more about who your community is and where they talk, rather than trying to setup “microsites” which are at best temporary and at worst a celebration of how much money an agency can make out of a stupid company just for some old style print design on the web.

Community is now so important that it cannot be ignored. Most of the major companies are aware of this, but it changes marketing into a much more conversational activity. It’s not even about permission to talk to me, as I now have an expectation of a conversation with any brands.

How do you manage community?

Psychology and Sociology are far more important in marketing now than they ever were. Maybe the key people are not techies or designers any more, but those that are able to understand people and the business models of a client. It’s a very different world.

twhirl vs. tweetdeck (March 2009)

I love twitter (here’s my profile: @PaulDJohnston). It’s my favourite social network, mainly because it’s so simple, quick and social. The best way to use twitter that I’ve found is via a client on your desktop, as the web interface, while useful, doesn’t give you all the info you need at a glance.

Full disclosure: I’ve been using Twhirl for most of the time I’ve been on Twitter (that’s about… 2 and a half years). Twhirl and Tweedeck are clients written in Adobe Air (which is basically Flash on your desktop). Having used Twhirl for so long, I’m quite used to how it does things, but I’ve been increasingly noticing my friends on twitter transferring to using Tweetdeck and I wondered why.

So, here’s a bit of a review of Tweetdeck vs Twhirl.

Twhirl – http://www.twhirl.org/

Twhirl Client

Overview

Nice simple client with an intuitive interface. You see your tweets come in, and you can easily just type your tweets and get out there. Very simple to understand, and when I’ve introduced users to twitter for the first time, it’s usually through Twhirl. Has the ability to add not just twitter accounts, but also seesmic, friendfeed and others.  Very useful, although with multiple accounts, come multiple windows, which can quickly become a little unmanageable.

It’s simple to use for a single account, and if all you are after is a constant stream of updates from who you follow on twitter, then it’s very simple and clean. It doesn’t easily lend itself to more complex use of the social space, such as twitter search (even though the functionality is there).

The clarity of the interface is my favourite part of Twhirl. Simply being able to see at a glance who is tweeting and whether it’s a reply or direct message is very important to me. It means I can see at a glance if I want to read a tweet or not.  Let’s face it, I don’t want to be taking all my time up, but a quick glance can sometimes be all I have time for.

I would give Twhirl 8/10 for being a solid and simple twitter client. It provides a clean, clear interface for novice/beginner twitter usage, and as such is the perfect client to start off with.  It is let down by not providing filtering of a stream, and not providing a simple way of viewing real-time search results and grouping of users.

Pros

• Simple one column interface
• Different colours for @Replies, and Direct Messages within the stream allows for quick glance checking of my stream
• Can easily have multiple accounts displayed at the same time
• Only a few buttons, and small functionality subset
• Easy @Reply, ReTweet and Direct Message mechanism
• I like the colours – personal preference I know, but the defaults are easy on the eye to me, and I know that if I see the “twhirl green” on the screen, then twhirl is trying to get my attention

Cons

• No filtering on a stream of tweets
• Can’t display @replies and Direct Messages at the same time as the timeline
• Account management and creation is a little “clunky” and not intuitive – this is minor as once setup, you really shouldn’t need to worry about it
• No “grouping” of users, to display only tweets from specific people

TweetDeck – http://www.tweetdeck.com/

Tweetdeck Client

I like Tweetdeck and it’s definitely trying to do more than twhirl.  It’s a pure twitter client, and has the added advantage of a multi-column interface. It starts with just “All Friends”, “Replies” and “Direct Messages”. You can easily add multiple columns with groups of your friends in it (you set who is in the groups). This is useful when you just want to find out about a subset of who you follow. You can also set a column for a search on twitter. So if you are interested in a specific hashtag, for example, you can see all public tweets related to that hashtag.

There is lots of information and sometimes it gets a little overwhelming. The most useful buttons I’ve found for each column are the “Mark all as seen” and the “Clear seen tweets” buttons. These allow you to remove from the interface things that are “past”.

The font size is a little bigger than twhirl and as such, you can fit less tweets onto the screen. This is frustrating as I find I do a lot of scrolling. The column width appears to be fixed also (or is difficult to change), and so the interface basically has to take over a maximised space on the desktop, which is not hugely helpful.

There are also other functions, such as adding in 12seconds, Twitscoop and Stocktwits to the interface, but I haven’t used these.

However with the search columns, the grouping and the multiple columns, Tweetdeck can be very powerful in giving information very quickly on a specific subject.

I would give Tweetdeck 7.5/10 for being a good twitter client. It is in my opinion, the best choice for the twitter power user. It has good grouping of users and provides simple filtering of information. Tweetdeck is let down by the interface being not quite intuitive enough and providing too much information within a non-customisable and cluttered workspace.

Pros

• Lots of information available
• Grouping of users is vital
• Search available in the same interface
• Simple Filtering of streams

Cons

• Single twitter account only
• Cannot find a user’s profile without their image being available
• Sometimes too much information
• Easily cluttered
• Lots of features I just won’t use
• Font size and column widths aren’t customisable

Usability and Social Applications

I’ve been thinking a lot about social networking and it’s application in the real world. Social Networks (of the internet kind) are here to stay, and everyone is now trying to “socialise” their websites and online interaction by adding commenting or by blogging or something similar.  You can even go on Facebook and Throw Sheep and other items (which I personally think is pointless).

Social networks are (and are increasingly going to) change the world we live in. The New Scientist article on Innovation: How Social Networking Might Change the World is an interesting starting point for the conversation.

Usability

I’ve been thinking about the applications that I use on these social networks and why.  To be honest, the socialisation of the web is due to one factor and that is usabliity.

Most people when talking about usability focus on visual design, or if you’re very lucky, on how a user travels through a web experience. The functional design is sometimes discussed as well, and these kinds of applications often are better than most, but there is a more important factor

Simplicity and Speed of Interaction

The applications and social networks I use the most are Twitter, Email (yes it is a social network), commenting on Blogs and then Facebook. I am using Facebook and Email less and less, and here’s why:

It takes very little time to tweet and comment

In my busy day (and social networks makes life more busy, not less) I don’t want to have to write a full email, or even a blog post to get most of my points across.  I want to be able to make my point, see the reaction and have a conversation.

My favourite apps that I use regularly:

• Twitter – simple way of just saying what you’re doing right now, and having a conversation with your friends
• SuperBadger (Facebook App) – change the world with a few simple clicks – and it really is changing the world!

People are now getting used to real time interactions, and there is beginning to be real time search too. http://search.twitter.com can now be incorporated into google using a Greasemonkey script: Greasemonkey Twitter Script.  The speed with which we expect to interact is changing.

Building Social Applications

The issue with applications is now simplicity and speed. Barack Obama realised this with his twitter stream and iPhone app for the 08 Election in the US. Quick information, simple interaction and you can get it now.  It was always about getting noticed, and the world is becoming more simple, not more complicated.

The applications that will win, are those that provide the user with the most power, whilst asking as little as possible in terms of time and thought.  Twitter wins and so does SuperBadger for me.

Reassessing My Online Profile – Part 2

Read this first: Reassessing My Online Profile

I enjoy blogging, but I much prefer tweeting about my life. I find it much easier to keep things short and not waste my time ranting about stuff on a blog (which is what tends to happen). However, I’ve come to an interesting crossroads in my career…

No More Work

For the first time in 8 years, I leapt out of the “running a business” world into the “being employed” world last December. I have amassed enough experience to be seen by some very big companies as a Web Strategist and Consultant and to be employed to run a department producing Web Strategy and Delivering Websites for Blue Chip clients.

So I essentially moth-balled my business life and went to this job. The company went into Administration after me being there 7 weeks (about 3 weeks ago) and has left me with no business, has not paid for part of my time there and I now have no money.

Not a sob story

I’m not asking for sympathy here (although it’s nice – I’d prefer some consultancy work)! There are many in my situation in the economic climate, without work and without any means of earning any. I’ve run a business before and I know how things can change quickly, but it has to be the right change.  Starting a business from scratch (again) is not a prospect I will take on lightly.

Where to now?

I’ve spent a long time over the past few weeks looking for a new job, or wondering how I can restart my business. There are many options, but not all are appropriate. The job market is shocking at the moment, and the last interview I went to, I was asked how long I was going to stay, as my CV just looked too good. Reading between the lines, I’m concerned that I’ve set my sights too low!

I do think my online profile is key to my next steps, but the question is…

What should I do now?

In the spirit of the internet, I should probably crowdsource my answer, and get those that read my blog and my twitter stream and know me (or at least, know my online persona) to help me out now. Answering questions for me like:

• What do you think I’m good at?
• What area do you think I add the most value to a business?
• If you were to start a new business now, what sector would you focus on?
• Should I just pack it all in and do something completely different?

I’m not sure that will necessarily help though!

Oh, and if anyone else says “do what you love” I shall scream – love and money do not always go hand in hand!

How should my profile change?

If I’m going to change, then I need to change what I talk about, and promote myself more. I’ve been told that I’m very bad at promoting myself but an excellent motivator and inspirational about how to utilise new technologies. Maybe I just need to learn some of the tricks of the online marketers who dominate because they spew out rubbish.

What I really want to do

If I’m honest, what I really want to do is setup a start-up business. But the key to a start-up is having a working idea/prototype, and almost all my ideas are currently not at that stage. I’d love to be involved in a start-up though, so if there are start-ups that require someone who is blue-chip consultant level then get in touch.  Sales, marketing, PR, technical architect, strategy… any area.

My Linked In profile

Startup Sales and Lead Generation Tips (from my Twitter friends)

I’ve been wondering how a twitter stream can help a business, so I thought I’d try a quick test on twitter.  First a bit of background…

I run a business!

It’s called Vida (or various other names I choose to call it) and it’s always been a vehicle to allow me to have lots of fun doing interesting projects for companies like Gap, Honda, Isuzu, Coke, Unilever and Tesco. Mainly working through other agencies, as Vida doesn’t have a large sales and marketing budge and I never really wanted to employ people.  I have 2 kids and I’ve seen them grow up to be 6 and 8.  Best choice I’ve ever made.

Now my kids are in school, I’m thinking it’s probably more important to build up the company, so I need a new Sales and Marketing approach.

Crowd Sourcing Business Consultancy via Twitter

I have around 250 people on Twitter who follow me. I also post my twitter feed to Jaiku, Friendfeed, and Facebook, so lots of people read my twitters.  I’ve seen people ask questions on Twitter and get very useful responses, so I thought I’d try it.  My question was:

if you were to start a company now, what would be your tips for lead generation and sales?

I then direct messaged a few people to ask for their responses. I got several very interesting ones.  Some of the answers are picked out below:

martinpacker @pjnet Sniff around the tragedies of others?

epredator @pjnet share everywhere work a freemium model and see every person on every network as customer trust serendipity

NikkiPilkington @pjnet SEO, online networking and article marketing – work hard to build brand and reputation

stevepurkiss @pjnet network, network, network…

rooreynolds @pjnet asks “if you were to start a company … tips for lead generation and sales?” – be Interesting. Don’t treat social media as marketing

PBJohnson @pjnet but SEO is easier to grasp than networking … so easier to outsource?

epredator @pjnet if you attract people they are the right people you may have to alter the “product”

NikkiPilkington @pjnet fair enough – I misunderstood “reserve of small biz”

SuButcher @pjnet think about the client/user/purchaser. What are they thinking? What do they want? Where will they go to get it?

epredator @pjnet “no publicity is bad publicity” social media and long tail engagement seems to offer opportunity to engage with customers new and old

Other Comments

I also received several direct messages, and one of which caught my eye. Roo Reynolds sent me 2 links on Interestingness, one from his own blog and one from Russel Davies which I think are stunningly good links on how to be interesting as a person:

how to be interesting A brilliant and timeless blog on how to attract people

Russell Davies well worth a read to give Roo’s take on Russell’s ideas

So What Now?

So, I’ve had lots of advice, and I’ve generated lots of ideas. I personally think that SEO is far from useful when going after large corporate accounts, but I see the purpose of it.  I do think however, I’m going to remember to blog more, and make myself more interesting!

So watch this space. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be more interesting.

Web 2.0, cash flow, valuation and business models

I like Web 2.0. It’s a great idea and a fantastic buzzword. It allows me to seem “in the know” to people who are only just beginning to get Web 1.0.

But the problem is that Web 2.0 seems to have a slight identity crisis, certainly within the business world. A lot of discussion has happened and is happening around the idea of revenue and cash flow for web 2.0 businesses.  This comes on the back of Twitter securing $15m funding for continuing to grow it’s business, when there are many in the business world who are asking where the business model is.

This article in the FT a few days ago, it suggests that most financiers are at the very least unsure about why they should invest in a company.  Web 2.0 to them is about social online behaviour, and so far, very few of the recent startups has shown enough promise to start making money.  Twitter, for example, is being backed because of the strong early adopter user base it has grown very quickly.  The interesting thing is that there’s still no obvious business model, even now and it’s been going a while.

But maybe the key is that it is changing our online behaviour.  It used to be just about email and phone, then came online ads, and now it’s about putting out your online personality.  This will create groups (I don’t want to use the word “crowd” here) that can then start to become the next business communities.  So maybe, Twitter will just become a community around which business is done.  What business and how much that will make for the users or for Twitter is unknown, but Dell and others are beginning to use Twitter to get information out there about their businesses.

Some of the other businesses that are touted as Web 2.0 are Slide (how it’s worth $500m I will never know) and Ning. Because all of these businesses start with open source software and tend to be beta versions at launch, then the technology tends not to be the valuable part.  The value appears to be in the number of users that they can get as quickly as possible.  So making something that is “useful” and/or “fun” for a large number of people appears to be how to make a Web 2.0 startup. Monetisation is not the key.

Jemima Kiss points out that it’s not simply enough to look at the finances of a business.  Web 2.0 is still young as an industry (if indeed it is a separate industry to the “normal” web) and these businesses springing up are less about the traditional and more about the innovative side of business.  Maybe Web 2.0 is the future of all business and maybe it is going to be much more disruptive than even we are seeing now.

My opinion is that Web 2.0 companies are here and here to stay and I like them.  I still fail to see how Twitter is going to make a lot of money (and certainly not out of it’s current user base) without someone there creating a micro-payment model (of some sort) on top of it.

The key to a successful Web 2.0 company appears to be finding the right angel to invest at the start (if needed) and the right VC to fund it after the initial launch, and the right company to purchase after a short-ish amount of time.  It’s less about the business model and more about fashion.  Maybe the business model is more like that in that it’s more of the web’s “luxury item” than previous companies were. Luxury and fashion may be the way to view Web 2.0.

Social Network Feedback Loops

I was just chatting with my mate James Ogley (a curate in the Church of England down in Bursledon and also a SuSE evangelist) and we were just trying to figure out if it’s possible to create a feedback loop.

While it may or may not work (or be socially/internet responsible) it is something that should be considered.

If networks such as friendfeed did something like auto-post comments to another social network, and then that network auto-posted those comments back to friendfeed you could end up with a feedback loop very easily.

The thing is, has this been done, and if it hasn’t how do you stop it happening?

Every post must have a unique URL against as an identifier of course, but if when you pull a post from somewhere else it gives it a new unique URL, then what’s to stop it being a perfect feedback loop?

I’m not suggesting this is a good idea as it’s likely that at least one of the networks online would be overrun and brought down because of it.  However, maybe there needs to be a more robust solution for handling posts posted in one place being sent to another.  Maybe a post should only have 1 unique URL.

The problem is, that if you use a multi-posting client like twhirl then one post to twhirl can create 3 identical but essentially unique posts elsewhere.  Which one is the master post?

This could be a problem folks…

Spamship – Spam friendship social networking

Over the past few years, I’ve watched and been a part of several social networks. My favourite (currently only) is twitter.  I have developed lots of friendships over the years, some entirely online, and some I’ve made online and continued in real life.

What I’ve seen before, but I’m noticing more and more is something I like to call spamship. What this is is a person making a cursory link between themselves and yourselves on a social network.  The better ones at it make an attempt at a conversation, but there are enough out there who are just setting up profiles to gather “connections”.  The worst ones are those who think that the number of friends on a network somehow signifies either popularity or value or expertise.  It’s rubbish.

An added extra that has emerged is distributed spamship which is even more annoying.  Someone “friends” you on one social network, and then “imports” their friendships from that network into another network.  What happens if you’re on both networks? You’re automatically joined to them there too.

It makes the idea of friendship less and less useful and more and more annoying. It is friendship spamming and it’s something that I don’t like. The only beneficiary is the person who is doing the spamming as you end up with pointless connections that have zero value to you elsewhere.

I like the idea that twitter uses of followership. Where you choose to follow a person, and they can follow you, if they want. There is no need to reciprocate if you don’t want to. Twitter puts me in control of my own friends and means that I don’t have to follow anyone I see as a spammer that chooses to follow me.

What will emerge in the future is that followership is going to become a much better guide to expertise, popularity or value than the number of friends a person has.  I know this isn’t new, but it is going to emerge.

We need to organise our lives around something. The internet allows us to have massively connected networks but we just can’t cope for long periods with so many relationships. We will have to focus our time and energies on certain niches and networks whilst staying aware of the outside world.

Spamship will decline as networks mature.  We will need to be more in control of our networks than we are currently, but there will always be a need for openness and collaboration, and we shouldn’t stop people who wish to watch/follow from doing so. We’re all open for collaboration.

BarCampLondon4 – I’m going!

Wooohooo!

I’m going to BarCampLondon4! I’m really looking forward to it, having been to BarCampLondon3, and on a reserve ticket that time too (I really need to work on my timing).

Having said that, I only received an email saying I was first on the list and to reply by the end of the day.  It was sent at 4:10pm on a Friday, so I’m not sure if I had 50 minutes to reply or 7:50 to reply.  I hope he’ll take 2 hours!

Well, now to think of a talk…

Maybe my blogging over the next 2 weeks will help me! At the last one I did 101 uses for twitter which brought forth 75 uses in 30 minutes.  Maybe I’ll do a follow on talk.

If anyone who’s going (or isn’t) wants me to expand on anything on my blog, please let me know and I may do a talk on that instead!

Communities part deux – Reputation Management

One of the things I dislike about online “communities” is that there is often a nastiness that comes along with the interaction. The fact that you don’t have to meet a person to be in a dialogue with them means that you can pretty much say what you like. The gloves are off.

One of the things I really like about online “communities” is that there is often an openness and honesty that comes along with the interaction. You find out a bit more about the real person and some friendships can be created and massively enhanced because of the interaction.

It’s an inherent contradiction that the openness of the internet allows both openness and nastiness.  The worst part of this is that people online will often make assumptions about a person’s ideas or beliefs, and act on that understanding. The reaction of others can often taint a person online, especially in the age of “search” where nothing online gets hidden.

You can’t change other people, you can only change how you react.  If you don’t like the idea of the community being that open, then don’t become a part of it. Dialoguing is sometimes useful, but there can often become a point where it just brings both down in the estimation of everyone who views the interaction.

Reputation Management is a term that has started to appear because of this openness.  I first heard it about 2 years ago in relation to online, where a person in one of my online business networks started offering a service to get a person’s Google search results changed. It meant that things that were undesirable (including negative comments) were pushed down the list and replaced with a more positive view of that person, but the negative things could not be eradicated. It’s spin for the internet generation. Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, is an interesting case of poor reputation management in the fracas with his girlfriend.  Internet spin gone wrong!

I like the idea of reputation management, but I also find it slightly disingenuous. Part of what attracts people is the “warts and all” interactivity of the net. The fact that people/companies with spare cash can in some way portray a positive view of themselves is good sense in a business world, but a person with no skeletons is much more scary than a person with a few. In my view, it’s a balancing act.

What I much prefer is to be able to find other people’s views of a person (or company). If their view of that person is positive then I am going to be more favourable to that view than of the person’s “spin”. Kind of like an Amazon rating for people.

The problem with an amazon rating is that there are many types of people on the internet. Books are different, because the content of the book means that only certain types of people are going to read it. Books on C# will be read by techies. Mills and Boon by women of a certain age.  So the ratings are going to be from people with similar interests.  People are a different matter. They are a part of different groups and have different aims.  So how do you judge their rating?

You have to find people who know that person for the same reason as you may want to. In business that’s quite simple – to use their services or find out about them as a prospective client. That’s why businesses try so hard to get testimonials from their clients. However, they control those testimonials and what you see.  You never, ever see the bad bits.

When you are in an online community with someone, you have the opportunity to find out another person’s reputation from their interactions with others. Most communities have a friends list, and you can find those connections to you.  It’s the idea behind LinkedIn, because you are constantly working through your contacts to find other contacts, a partial trust has appeared, but there’s no rating. I like this approach to a point, but it attracts the wrong type of people in my view. People with a big contact base (sales people generally) mean you end up with a bunch of people all trying to get the biggest number of contacts.

In the end, the best way to manage a business reputation is for a company is for it to be the best it can be and to be clear about what it does. The community around it will then speak out loud about it, and the nay-sayers will be available but will be just noise.  That kind of reputation, where the negative is available, but outweighed by the positive says more about that company than any kind of management of what is visible.

Lots said… need to work!  I’ll probably talk about the idea of followership in my next blog… this one’s got too long!