What Twitter Buying Tweetie Can Teach Us

April 10, 2010 By Jeremiah Staes Leave a Comment

tweetie-twitter-logoThis week’s acquisition of Tweetie’s parent company AteBits has caused quite a stir online.

There’s an overall lesson for business and marketing we can take away from this experience, however.

Don’t do what everyone else does in your market and expect long term success, as the only constant is change.

It’s your duty as a company to cautiously embrace change at every turn because change is a constant. The market will NEVER stay the same. There will always be someone else out there, or another outside force that may unexpectedly affect your business. (After all, like it or hate it, five years ago, health reform like what was recently passed wasn’t even a plausible possibility. The bottom line from a business standpoint is that there are insurance companies all over the United States who are now forced to change due to outside forces.)

As for Twitter creating a Blackberry app and buying Tweetie, this is frankly the best possible move for Twitter and for consumers. Why?

1) It creates a baseline, free standard. Anyone who is going to truly succeed needs to innovate past this. (Folks like Co-Tweet and Hootsuite, who not only update Twitter but other services AND provide a value-add as more “management” systems, will stand up pretty well.)

2) Elimination of confusion. Lots of new people are coming to the Twitter service, and having straightforward, easy-to-find applications will only help the adoption. I’ve personally run into many cases where people are paralyzed by confusion when selecting an app, and walk completely away from the service.

3) It pushes the bar higher for third-party developers. It means apps are going to have to get better than the baseline to survive. And that’s a good thing.

As much as I think developers are great and crucial, Twitter now has critical mass. It’s time to innovate and move forward. Twitter doesn’t need, and the market doesn’t need the thousands of basic Twitter apps and services out there. The market does need apps and services that actually do stuff people want over and above the basic.

And that’s a win for consumers.

Filed Under: Business, Industry News, Social Media Tagged With: Business Lessons, Tweetie, Tweetie Acquisition, Twitter

Video: SMCD, Sarah Worsham, and The Detroit Public Library

March 26, 2010 By Jeremiah Staes Leave a Comment

I had the pleasure of taping (and broadcasting live on UStream) the most recent Social Media Club Detroit get-together, which this time was lead by Sarah Worsham and her “Connecting the Dots Between Twitter and the Sale” presentation, as well as an informative Q&A and suggestion session from Steve Teeri, a staff member of the Detroit Public Library.

The Social Media Club Detroit crowd had a lot of questions and suggestions for Steve, and was quite informed by Sarah’s presentation. For me, it reinforced the base/outpost strategy, as well as she did a nice job of dividing measuring into four areas.

Filed Under: Industry News, Social Media Tagged With: detroit public library, sarah worsham, SMCD, social media club detroit, steve teeri

Lessons Learned From Sproutbuilder Shutting Down

February 16, 2010 By Jeremiah Staes 2 Comments

Don’t trust the cloud.

Or I should say, don’t trust the cloud alone.

sproutbuilder-logo

Sproutbuilder is a service that was recommended to me by a friend to check out.  Since they had been around a couple years, it seemed a good fit for a few projects so I signed up for a monthly subscription. Well, Sproutbuilder is shutting down in the next 45 days, and so all the work we’ve done on that platform is going to be lost (and we will have to spend time re-creating).

Look, I get the need to focus the business. Although ditching everyone who pays less than $3,000 a month when you had service offerings that were less than one tenth of that seems quite a stretch, I get it. I understand you gotta focus. However, there are lessons to be learned and I will NOT consider paying Sprout’s ransom to keep my account. I’d rather spend the money in time recreating things than to be locked down.

Subscribers of the service cannot download or keep any of the materials they create. Even with this losing of service, everyone is screwed because Sprout is not allowing you to take the stuff you created, so many people are just going to be out of luck completely. In our case, that’s my fault for choosing a service like that, even though at the time it seemed like the perfect fit. I should have remembered my lessons.

Lesson One: If You Can’t Take It With You, Don’t Use It

Sproutbuilder locks you into their proprietary files, and you can’t download and save your work locally. This is why I will not even consider spending $3000 for a service from a company I obviously cannot trust, because they’ll just pull the plug with little support. It’s not just Sproutbuilder – you should never trust cloud services on their own. If you cannot keep a local copy or mirror of your stuff, do not use it. You’re putting your business fate in the hands of others without a backup plan.

Lesson Two: Companies Will Fail

Even the biggest of companies can fail, and you cannot have yourself be exposed to it. We’re losing quite a few hours of work because we can’t bill recreating stuff, but we have to do it, because we’re living up to our responsibilities even when Sprout did not. Again, easily solved if one could take what you created with you. Sprout Inc. and Sproutbuilder is a customer relations failure because they don’t let you do that, and they’ve erased any trust I might have to pay them $3,000 per year.

Lesson Three: You’re Going To Have To Pay More In The Future

I personally think the days of inexpensive or free services that are reliable are coming to a close. Outside of ones funded by Google, I don’t think that there’s a possibility for these services who start free to have a future. Very few (if any) have shown that they can make the transition from free to paid. The real route to success is having a paid product or service to begin with so it has an established a value with the consumer.

Sproutbuilder was a free product at the start, and I think that monetizing from free to a subscription is simply a hard road to go down and I would not invest there.Much better is to just charge from the beginning – what’s the point if you have a half million users if you’re losing money on them, unless you’re a charity?

Why Freemium Doesn’t Work For Almost All Businesses

The reason why the transition from free to paid doesn’t work is psychology. Although you love your product or service and it may have value, outside of the tech bubble if you set your price at “free” the monetary value by the purchaser is zero, no matter how much they rely on you. Convincing more than a very small percentage of people that it’s worth more than free is extremely hard, and even harder is getting them to pay an amount that makes money. Bits are free, but people are not.

Logically, if that convincing users to the paid product had occurred in sufficient numbers in the case of Sproutbuilder, they wouldn’t have discontinued the service levels. It’s always easier to lower your prices than to raise them.

I’ll take any of your recommendations in the comments for other services and Sprout or Sproutbuilder alternatives. The work we need to recreate is relatively small, and of course, we’re willing to pay for the service. I also hope there’s a general lesson remembered (at least on our part) that if you can’t take it with you, don’t use it.

Filed Under: Business, Industry News Tagged With: cloud computer, don't trust the cloud, sprout, sprout inc, sprout shutdown, sproutbuilder

Questioning God

December 4, 2009 By Jeremiah Staes 1 Comment

in-garyv-we-trustThere’s groupthink in any industry, but I think ours in Social Media is full of it to an extreme extent.

Because it’s so relatively new (although some of us has been interacting socially on the web for 15 years before the tools got nifty pastel gradients and friendly icons reminiscent of songbirds) people are busy looking for any validation of their beliefs due to either their inexperience, their need to be like others, or simply professionally being able to point to someone else.

Unlike any other marketing/PR/customer service/etc. function, social media crosses so many barriers and traditional silos that it literally scares people. We who live “in the biz” forget that this isn’t second nature and intimidating to most not just because of the tools but the impending culture shift, contradicting what years of B-school and hierarchies reinforced.

And what do people do when they’re scared? Come together. At times through religion. Add into the mix it’s digital and many people over 40 don’t have much value for bits and bytes and/or culturally don’t understand their significance, you have a flock of converts under attack looking for leadership.

The Universal Law (Benefit) of Social Media

However, in order for our industry to grow, and for the real, universal benefit of social media – connecting people to make things happen, whatever that “thing” is to you – true progress is going to be made not by parroting the current leaders of the social media industry, but by taking their experience and trying new things. Working it. I say this with the utmost respect, but the only real difference between them and everyone else is the willingness to try something and do the hustle to make it work, and being willing to fail (which by the way, is much easier said than done, and one of many reasons to respect thought leaders).

After all, there is no formula when dealing with people; and this is dealing with people to the largest extent. Every situation you’re going to want to draw on yours and others experiences, real data, ask hard questions and be willing to listen to the answers, even if they don’t match your initial thought.

You need to be willing to act quickly, decisively, and comport to the needs of your community, not necessarily your needs.

So go out, be fruitful, be an evangelist for your brand, love your users, love your community, and charge on. We might have different sized caravans – or lone riders on a trusty steed. But if you want to make things happen – be that trailblazer with your own ideas.

Filed Under: blogging, Business, Industry News, Love Your User, Online Marketing Fundamentals, Social Media, Social Media Fundamentals Tagged With: questioning, Social Media, social media benefits, trailblazing, universal law of social media

11,000 Reasons To Disclose

October 5, 2009 By Jeremiah Staes Leave a Comment

behind-the-curtain

This has been coming for months, and as of December 1st, it’s here.

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has decided to put their hand into the blogosphere (as well as other types of endorsements) and have a policy shift that requires more disclosure than before. This initiative (started and most of the formulation was done by the previous presidential administration) is no surprise – but an under-covered story. Now that’s it’s on our doorstep, I hope more pay attention.

In some ways, this is a good thing – digital is being taken seriously enough and has proven it’s efficacy enough to require being noticed. But, with prestige comes responsibility – and since we’re talking about transactions, even if they’re “freebies,” you’re influencing people because of influences you normally wouldn’t have.

I’ve always been a proponent of full disclosure – I think that the culture of the web (which is the deciding factor – not of your profession or company) leans toward being transparent

Social media etiquette is like when you go to someone’s house – the deciding factor of whether you take your shoes off at the door is the discretion of the host, not the guest.

Open The Kimono

I honestly don’t understand the outrage of people who are against disclosure. Why does it matter to tell your audience if you received a sample, gift, or are paid for the review? If your audience ACTUALLY trusts you, it won’t hurt your credibility whatsoever.

Here’s some suggestions for disclosure:

  • Lay The Disclosure At The Reader’s Feet: The footer disclosure. At the end of the post, possible as a p.s. or italics, there’s a straightforward disclosure line.
  • Integrate it into the post. Just come out and say, “The Acme company sent me these freebies the other day, and I tried….”
  • Have A Post That Tells The Story. Especially if your site is a review site and you’re brought on retainer by a PR or ad firm to write about their products (I know bloggers who are in this situation), et all, you should have a post that states the relationship directly, offer a place for questions in the comments, etc.

Again, if you actually have trust with your readers, you have nothing to fear. It will be interesting over the next few months how the public reacts to this disclosure. However, if you’re really serious about your blog and reputation – step into the dojo:

Black Belt Judo Move: Develop and Publish Your Policy

Judo_Fight_270462Yep, I’m encouraging individuals to have a policy on this and publish it.. according to what you’re comfortable with and what’s within the bounds of the upcoming regulation. I believe readers (even if you don’t consider yourself a journalist, however, evidence is mounting that’s the default standard the public has once your readership reaches a certain level) deserve to know what you’re internal barometer is. This is a big reason WHY mainstream publications are trusted by most and continue to have high level of readership - and continue to be the “originators” of content. If you’re going to be a quality, followed, content originator, trust needs to be built up over time. Here’s a great for-instance from CNET on how they approach disclosure. Not saying you should copy exactly, however, it’s an idea how a respected publication takes it. One initiative our network uses is Blog With Integrity.

The Field Is Moving Forward

I believe December 1st is a turning point of sorts. I think the entire discipline is growing up so different rules are being applied, and just like people forever thought “blogging is dead,” it’s just because the people who weren’t dedicated and not as good didn’t have the readership or passion to continue – and Twitter, at 140 characters, was easier.

The unintended consequence is that those who actually do still blog got more authority and audience due to the lack of commoditization – if you’re writing blog posts, you’re obviously putting in more effort than a Tweet and more and more people aren’t willing or able to do more than a Tweet – and they NOW realize how much more difficult it is as far as writing, time commitment, research, etc.

What do you think? Is the government stepping too far in? What justifiable reasons does a blog writer or person have to NOT disclose relationships?

Filed Under: Advertising, blogging, Business, Industry News, Love Your User, Online Marketing Fundamentals, Social Media Tagged With: blog disclosure, disclosure, fines, ftc, Social Media
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »