Connectivity

Social media brings me closer to people with whom I ordinarily would seldom interact. Family, friends, colleagues. As my co-author Amber Naslund put it once “with social media, my relationships aren’t bound by geography or circumstance.” Exactly.

Humanity

People always slam Twitter for people talking about “what they had for lunch” but the blending of the personal and professional is very attractive to me. I want to know what music you listen to, what you think is funny, why your cat is insane. When was the rule written that business had to be all-business? Life is so boring under those conditions.

Spontaneity

I love that I can interact with clients and friends at any time, from nearly any place. The ability to make or consume social media from an array of mobile devices increases the convenience factor (and the pressure on my wi-fi router) immensely.

Measurability

The reason I was originally a political campaign consultant (late 80s, early 90s), is the satisfying success metrics. You can’t get half elected. The day after an election, you’re either ebullient or morose. That’s what attracted me to online marketing initially, and why I made the jump to that career in the mid-90s. The tracking online (including social media) far outpaces what I had at my disposal when I was doing traditional marketing. The fuzzy numbers of TV, print, radio, outdoor and traditional PR drove me crazy. I like math and analysis and reality.

Transitory

There’s literally never a dull moment in social media. Every day is different, and significant changes occur on a near weekly basis. Facebook’s gyrations alone are enough to keep you on your toes. I love change. I thrive on it. I simply cannot imagine working in an industry where status quo was the norm. I understand the appeal of certainly, it’s just not my preference.

Personality

I am compelled by the fact that the bottom line objective of social media is to add human elements to companies that have acted like inhuman, robotic cyborgs for the past 40 years. The anthropomorphization of business is an interesting, satisfying challenge because it runs directly counter to what most businesspeople have been taught, and their corresponding comfort zone. Social media is fun because it’s hard.

Flexibility

There are no right answers in social media, just answers that are more likely to be correct. It’s a benefit, not a drawback that (despite what others might proclaim) there is no social media playbook that can taken off the shelf and executed in rote fashion for all companies. You are free to make your own reality and script your own success.

Inevitability

Sure, we all talk about Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. But the rise of social media isn’t about technology and tools, it’s about power and people. Social media gives us some measure of control over our relationships that have been largely fractured by our always-on society.

Every church, ad club, Rotary, Kiwanis, Elk, Moose etc organization in the U.S. is faced with declining membership, because who has the time for a 2-hour lunch any longer? Even in a recession, our economic productivity continues to climb. How is that possible? Because we are working faster, longer, and more intensely, and the time for friends and family falls by the wayside. And socia media also gives us power over brands in ways we’ve never enjoyed. Social media is word-of-mouth on steroids, and our ability to praise or punish brands with a few keystrokes is satisfying.

Technology

I’m a gadget guy. I love it. My favorite part of our new home in Bloomington, Indiana is the in-ceiling speakers throughout that I can manipulate with a hand-held Logitech Squeezebox controller, so I can pick any song from my iTunes library and play it in any room in three clicks. A love for software and hardware and figuring out how new stuff can change behavior is a handy attribute in the social media business.

Revolutionary

As we adopt social media to connect personally and with companies, businesses will need to respond. Business responded to the invention of the telephone, fax machine, FedEx, and email. But have businesses truly responded to the rise of social media? Largely, they have not.

That’s the premise of my new book with Amber Naslund, “The Now Revolution: 7 Moves to Transform Your Business with Speed, Smarts & Social Media.” It’s how companies need to change their culture, their people, their process, and their measuring sticks to succeed in real-time business.

Opportunity

I realize the gift you give me every day – the gift of your attention. I am incredibly fortunate to have readers and supporters that expose my work to a wider audience than most social media consultants enjoy. Your faith creates for me an opportunity to educate more and more marketers and the companies for which they work. I don’t take that opportunity lightly, and I hope I never take it for granted.

Why do you love social media?

(illustration by my friend Mark Smiciklas who writes a great blog with tons of cool info-graphics)

The fastest way to get your company to be on the social media sidelines is to get your company involved in social media. There’s a huge gap between the perception of social media as an instant, free, can’t miss marketing opportunity and the reality of social media as a long-term, time-intensive customer loyalty and brand advocacy opportunity.

This has happened before online. Swept up in a frenzy created by mainstream and business media, companies rush to adopt the hot new thing, to ensure that the competition doesn’t have some sort of secret weapon. Proposals are written. Resources deployed. Stuff gets built. And then……………………………..

THUD.

The graveyard of digital marketing is littered with the bones and business cards of those that dove in head-first with high expectations, no strategy, and no plan for testing and optimization of results.

These types of half-cocked efforts almost invariably fail, and then those companies use those initial failures as a rationale for non-participation – sometimes for years.

Early in my online career I did a lot of website strategy and online advertising. There was a period (from about 1995-1998) where you almost literally couldn’t give away online ads. What I’d hear over and over again from companies that had bought online ads in the early days was “We tried that once. It didn’t work.” They simply could not be convinced that perhaps the way they tried it was inadequate. Or that they gave it insufficient time to succeed. Or that the strategy was wrong – or absent. Or that a lot more people were now online.

Decisions by Anecdote

It continues to amaze me how large marketing decisions are often made with almost no data or track record, by people who should know better. “We tried that once. It didn’t work.” Well, if you tried a slot machine 80 times and it didn’t work, and then you won $1500, you’d feel great about slot machines. If you sent 200 pieces of direct mail, and got 6 orders you’d feel great about direct mail.

The bottom line is that you need to EXPECT to fail in social media. You don’t have all the answers. You don’t know what’s going to work. Neither do I. And anyone who tells you they absolutely know what will work for your company definitely does not understand this business.

That’s what’s so admirable about companies that have clearly screwed up in social media, yet continue to change their approach until they find the right formula. Wal-Mart and Pepsi come immediately to mind.

By not telling your company executives the truth at the outset – that you are likely to fail before you succeed – you run the risk of giving them a handy excuse to pull the plug and say “We tried that once. It didn’t work.” And they can keep saying that until about 2013. Are you going to want to wait around that long?

Mitch Joel, whose blog and work I greatly admire, wrote a very interesting blog post recently that bemoaned the lack of conversation in social media. As coined by Joseph Jaffe (another good guy who was incidentally the very first guest on my series of live Twitter interviews), businesses have been trying to Join the Conversation for a while now. Yet, Mitch doesn’t see it happening in social media. He writes:

There is not much conversation going on at all.

Here’s what I do see:

• Blogs that have comments, with little back and forth. Some Bloggers respond to the comments and some don’t.
• Those that do have comments, usually have no further comment from the person who left a comment in the first place. That’s not a conversation. That’s feedback.
• Individuals not leaving a comment to engage in a conversation, but simply to promote their own links or to chest-thump.
• Twitter doesn’t really bring out a conversation. It’s a great place to broadcast and get some quick tidbits, but let’s face it, unless you’re creating spiritual and motivation tweets, it’s hard to have substance in 140 characters (or less – if you’re looking for a retweet).
• Even in cool arenas like the #blogchat that takes place on Twitter every Sunday night, it feels more like everyone screaming a thought at once than a conversation that can be followed and engaged with.
• Facebook has some great banter with the wall posts and status updates, but it’s more chatty than conversational and it’s not an open/public environment.

None of this is a bad thing… it just is.

Expect Less

I can see where Mitch is coming from. The increasing prevalence of social media is creating a lock step increase in uni-directional social media chest thumping. But what do we expect? That somehow we’re going to devise all these weird new technologies that allow us to send messages back and forth in cyberspace, and that somehow conversation is actually going to improve? We’ve been on a downhill slide conversationally ever since Alexander Graham Bell uttered “Mr. Watson—come here—I want to see you.”

To expect social media to truly emulate conversation as we know it is a fools errand. The information exchange is asynchronous. You can’t have asides (other than DMs). You miss out on any and all non-verbal communication (which is the lions share of how we actually communicate).

The real problem is expectation management. Joe Jaffe coined “conversation” (wisely), but it’s a misnomer. Other than a tweet back and forth, etc. it’s really not possible for a company (or even an individual like me) to have true conversations within social media – and certainly not with any real scale or breadth.

But Don’t Settle for Less

Now, there’s a difference between striving for conversation and settling for broadcasting. The success path must lie somewhere in the middle of those two boundaries. That’s why “humanization” is – at least to me – a better and more accurate description of what companies and individuals can and should aspire to achieve on the social Web. Opening the kimono and giving customers and prospects a better sense of who is part of the company, how that company operates, and what it stands for in a less formal, more spontaneous fashion is doable. Remember, social media makes big companies seem small again. And that’s a worthy objective. Real, meaningful conversations? Not so much.

It’s like consultants telling companies to be “transparent”. Sure, we’ll just post every company memo, financial statement, legal preceding, etc. on our website. That’ll be great. I love what my friend Beth Harte has to say on this issue. She believes the best we can hope for is “translucency” – and I concur.

Is Technology the Problem, or the Solution?

The problem is not that people are too infatuated with their “personal brands” and refuse to engage meaningfully. Instead, our lack of social conversation is a byproduct of technological realities that do nothing but create obstacles for actual conversation. If you wanted to create a system that replicated as best as possible the physical act of two people speaking to one another in the same place at the same time, would you build Twitter, or a WordPress comment system, or Facebook, or Linkedin? Absolutely not. Google Wave was the closest we’ve come, and that got killed off faster than the new Knight Rider TV show. We can’t continue jamming a square peg in a round hole hoping it will eventually fit, and then being frustrated when it doesn’t.

But yet, the fact that true conversations per se are unlikely shouldn’t serve as sufficient cultural permission to turn social media into Headline News. There’s a happy medium, right?

If you are conducting any level of online reputation management or campaign tracking using social media data sources, you have to get beyond the obvious. The point of tracking software isn’t to determine how many tweets were sent mentioning a company, it’s to figure out what those tweets say, and what the business ramifications are. Too often, standard charts and graphs included in software are just that, standard. They provide numbers, not insights.

If you’re an agency that’s providing social media listening or analysis services for clients, this is even more critical of a distinction. The ability to click “print” is not the exclusive domain of the agency professional. The more you serve up to your clients rote numerical recitations without context and recommendations, the more you’re opening yourself up to being replaced by your clients’ own printers, ink and paper.

You need to be creating custom charts and graphs and ideas that speak directly to the operational realities of each client. The disheartening truth is that there is very little “standardized” reporting available if you’re going to do social listening and analysis at the highest level.

RowFeeder – Raw and Ready

That’s what I like so much about the new RowFeeder social data gathering system. Assuming you want to dive into the pool of custom graph creation and data manipulation, you’ll probably do so in Microsoft Excel. RowFeeder is built for just such as circumstance, with tight Excel integration (version 2007 and newer) that provides both raw data for geeks to pull like taffy, plus canned reports that are better than most.

For social media professionals inclined to get their mathematical hands dirty, it’s a winning combination.

Six types of reports are included in RowFeeder:

• Post Volume and Velocity Analysis – What’s being said about keyword(s) on Twitter and Facebook.
• Conversation Driver Analysis – Examination of words, phrases, themes
• Location Analysis – Where conversations about you are occurring in the “real” world
• People Analysis – Who’s talking about you?
• Keyword Volume and Analysis – Comparative data across multiple terms
• Influencer Report – Who is talking about you that has disproportionate online influence?

There’s a bonus feature that automatically selects winners of online contests, via random number generator.

I interviewed Adam Schoenfeld, President and Co-founder of RowFeeder to learn more about the company and its plans. RowFeeder is the first business to be spawned from the buzzed about new tech incubator Untitled Startup – a “transparent startup” in Seattle that even publishes their website traffic live on their home page.

To date, customers of RowFeeder have either been interested in monitoring social media campaigns (tracking hashtags, Twitter replies, etc.); or engaged in brand reputation management, often on a weekly basis. Schoenfeld says that the original RowFeeder project was intended to integrate into Google Spreadsheets (and it still does), but the recent addition of Excel tie-ins open up the user base substantially.

“We think we’re ideal for companies needing that next level of insight into online conversation,” he said.

Because the RowFeeder team is very welcoming to custom report requests, it’s a good solution for agencies looking to put their own stamp on analytics, especially those without an Excel ninja on staff. Schoenfeld figures that for now, custom report ideas from companies and agencies help formulate the RowFeeder R&D path. (disclosure: RowFeeder gave me a free account to play with for a few weeks)

The RowFeeder reports are extremely easy to generate. After initial sign-up, just click a button, pick a date range and the report shows up on your desktop as an Excel file (or even CSV for the authentic nerds).

The standard charts and graphs are entirely useful. I like the at-a-glance usefulness of this one that shows the people that have tweeted about your company, organized by Klout score (See my post about Klout and online influence mining here).

Excellent Social Archive Capabilities

But given that RowFeeder is intended for the data warrior, my favorite feature is the spreadsheet capture of all mentions. Want to see every person that’s tweeted about you or send a Facebook message about you in the last 2 days? No problem. You get a single spreadsheet that includes keyword; name; full text of the message; URL of their Twitter bio; location; number of followers and friends; time sent; Klout score, and more. Having ALL the tweets and Facebook messages on a single sheet is fascinating and satisfying. It’s also very handy for easy archiving of historical social mentions (lawyer types or readers working in regulated industries should take note of that feature).

The ease-of-use and Excel format of RowFeeder are big pluses for me. The drawback is that they are only tracking Twitter and Facebook for now, so if you need to monitor blogs, blog comments, discussion forums, Linkedin or anything else on behalf of your company or clients, you’ll need to gather that data elsewhere.

Pricing is quite reasonable for RowFeeder. One keyword and up to 500 posts (Twitter or Facebook mentions) per month is free, making it a potential zero cost solution for very small businesses. Beyond that, pricing increases based on number of keywords and posts in $5 increments. The agency package includes white label reporting capabilities, custom charts, API access, and centralized management of multiple client accounts. For up to 50,000 combined posts monthly, the agency edition is $250/month.

RowFeeder does just a few things, but does them well in an Excel environment that is familiar to millions of people. It’s not the most full-featured solution available, but for the do it yourself data hounds, it’s a very nice addition to the social listening landscape.

Today’s post is a collaboration with Clinton Bonner, community connectivity expert, futurist, and blogger at Everything to Everything.

Starbucks is not only offering free Wi-Fi in all stores come this fall, but also unveiling their Starbucks Digital Network that all in-store web and mobile users will have the opportunity to enjoy (it’s a partnership with Yahoo!). Why would Starbucks need their own digital network? What impact could Starbucks’ brand of wireless connectivity have on consumer behavior? Plenty.

Imagine a customer-only network chock full of ‘In Network’ freebies that you can ONLY get while on ‘location’ (in this case at a Starbucks). Free access to premium news sites such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, free iTunes downloads, and for the kids free access to Nick Jr. games that typically require monthly fees.

Does this change how you might browse the Web, with your physical ‘branded’ location determining how and how much you pay for premium online content? Does this change where you might go to get your next cup of coffee and how you come to discover music and other consumer products?

Working Together to Remove Money From Your Pocket

What used to be content intended for all end-users to access the same way is now possibly just a piece of the marketing puzzle to properly equip cross-brand, cross-vertical collaboration and integration. What was once ‘the end’ purchase: a physical newspaper, a cup of coffee, or a digital song download is now a key cog in the greater scheme of getting the consumer to fork over more dollars, more consistently. Here’s a post from Clinton all about the band No Doubt and their successful shifting of the meaning of ‘end content’.

In the Starbucks case, it’s even more powerful. The consumer might frequent the Starbucks more, spend more money and/or time, or might really enjoy having full access to USA Today and become a converted, paid member. All of this marketing and purchase value is delivered under the cloak of giving you a new, richer experience. And it does indeed, which is why it’s so powerful. We’re willing accomplices in our own marketing funnel.

What’s Next (Potentially)?

Imagine a Starbucks patron is reading a review in the free version of the New York Times about a Chardonnay and suddenly their iPhone buzzes. A text coupon arrives in your mobile inbox and you are offered $5 off a wine purchase of $20 or more from a local wine purveyor. The coupon has a timed code and expires in 3 days, nudging you to act. The era of the hyper-relevant advertisement is upon us. And that example is just scratching the surface.

The means to deliver the right branded message, via the most influential medium, in the exact right moment is coming VERY soon. Starbucks could use their SDN to reinvent themselves as a key member of any local community, and not as a coffeehouse, but as the best-possible advertising platform available in every city and town in the country. Because of the commerce potential (subscriptions, coupons) a Starbucks local ad network (possibly empowered by Yahoo’s sales force) might even be a revenue share, making it even more efficient for marketers than Google Adwords or Facebook ads.

It’s capitalism and marketing at its most brilliant. Unapologetic intrusiveness, warmly invited by the customer because the perceived value is high.

If you were Starbucks, how would you take advantage of this new network?

I need your help please. For every vote you cast for the keynote at South by Southwest featuring me and Amber Naslund, we’ll donate $1 of our book advance to Make-A-Wish Foundation®.

1. Go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/
2. If you don’t have an account, please make one. It will take just a few seconds
3. Click the link that reads “Explore the Proposals for SXSW Interactive”
4. In the search fields at the top of the page, please enter “Naslund” where it reads “organizer”, then click “search panels”
5. You’ll see the description for “The Now Revolution” (our panel, my name will be added later). Please click the little thumbs up icon.
6. Then, tweet it out please. Something like “I voted for #TheNowRevolution for SXSW, to benefit @makeawish”

For every tweet sent that includes the #TheNowRevolution and @makeawish, we’ll donate $1 from our book advance (we trust that you’ll actually vote before you tweet, naturally).

If you’re feeling particularly frisky, I’d love for you to vote for my other two panels while you’re in the mood. “The Black Art of Optimizing Facebook Wall Posts” can be voted for here. “Your Content Stinks! Drive Results with Content Marketing” can be voted for here. Thank you!

The Revolution is Coming

I don’t think I’ve announced it publicly yet, but the final title of the new book from Amber and me (coming in February, 2011) is:

The Now Revolution: 7 Moves to Transform Your Business with Speed, Smarts and Social Media

Many, many thanks to everyone who voted on possible titles, and provided suggestions. We’ll have Facebook page and other promotional stuff about the book online soon – including pre-ordering capabilities.

Meanwhile, we’re hitting the road to present the core concepts of The Now Revolution to businesspeople and marketers everywhere. Amber presented a smashing summary at the recent SocialFresh Charlotte.

The South by Southwest keynote slot will be tremendously important as we launch the book, so we’d sure appreciate your help voting for us. Your votes count for 30% of the “scoring” when organizers determine who gets to speak at the mighty SXSW Interactive festival in March in Austin, Texas.

On behalf of Amber, myself, and especially Make-A-Wish Foundation, thanks for your help!

For a while now, there’s been too much talk about social media vs. email vs. search. All of these tactics can work together seamlessly to create a robust, optimized content marketing engine that pays real dividends in increased website traffic, and conversions.

A collaboration between RESMARK Systems (a provider of hospitality software), Western River Expeditions (an adventure tour company), Compendium (provider of corporate content creation software), and ExactTarget (provider of enterprise messaging software) shows how this can be done day-to-day. (Note to readers: all of these companies are Convince & Convert clients. However, I did not set up or advise on this program)

Once you and your family and friends have returned to dry land following an awesome Grand Canyon rafting trip – or similar adventure, the RESMARK system (powered by ExactTarget) automatically sends you an email, asking you to share your story and photos. The email is well-designed, personalized, and compelling. So much so, that 49% of recipients take the time to write about their experiences on a website form Western River provides.

The contents of this form are scanned by the Western River team, and are then posted (usually within minutes) to the company’s blog, which resides on the Compendium software. Compendium is a uniquely powerful blogging platform because it creates separate, “compended” blogs for each keyword. Thus, Western River doesn’t really have one blog, it has hundreds of keyword-focused blogs. Consequently, if someone searches for “Colorado River Whitewater Rafting” on Google, they’ll likely find that version of the Western River blog, which contains only posts about “Colorado River Whitewater Rafting“. The software automatically harvests and organizes topically similar posts for maximum search effectiveness.

Virality, Quick and Easy

Once the stories are approved and posted on the blog, RESMARK automatically triggers another email, notifying the author and asking them to share the story on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere. This of course creates a mini viral effect, as trip participants invite their friends, family, and desk-bound colleagues to check out their tales of whitewater adventure, dining al fresco, and sparkling waterfalls.

Since April, 2010 Western River has collected more than 1,100 of these customer stories. And once the system was set up and the business rules determined, the company spends almost no time managing the program. “We scan the stories before pushing them live on the blog, and we of course interact with guests and previous guests on Facebook and other places, but it’s very little work day-to-day.” said Brandon Lake, Vice President of Western River.

More Work Upfront, Less Ongoing

What I love about this program (in addition to the eye-popping results):

• It’s rooted in helpfulness, not marketing. Guests want to share their story. RESMARK and Western River is enabling that with a well-timed email nudge.
• It gives fans an appropriate assignment. The story collection form doesn’t require a manifesto, video clip, haiku or any other content hijinks. Guests type their story – upload a photo if they want – add their name and address. That’s it.
• It turns advocates into volunteer marketers. Each story shared becomes new content for the blog. That content helps the company with SEO, and also builds a real-time, living FAQ of customer testimonials and insights.
• It makes sharing simple. As Brian Solis has written about a lot, social optimization needs to be simple. You have to ask for sharing behavior in a relevant, contextual, streamlined fashion. With the second “your story is live, now share it” email and links, Western River is doing this perfectly.
• It punches a hole in the theory that social media and content creation success has to be a huge time commitment. This program definitely required some set up and integration work that goes well beyond the norm. But after that, Western River spends a few minutes a day on oversight and interaction, freeing up the rest of their time to actually run their core business. RESMARK has now packaged the integration, making it available to other tour operators globally.

As I’ve written several times, the people in your company responsible for email, and the people responsible for social media should be the same people. Remember, the first step in social media effectiveness shouldn’t be building an empire of half-baked, free-standing social outposts, but rather determining had to add social frosting to your existing marketing cake.

How are you integrating social media into other programs? Sound off in the comments, and maybe we’ll put together another post with great examples.

The enthusiasm about social media among public relations professionals is rampant, and encouraging. Wanting to be at the center of a new way to communicate to customers and prospects is a worthy objective. But, under pressure from digital and advertising agencies each looking to be the driver of the social media express, PR firms are sometimes turning over inquisitional rocks that do not portray them as strategic caretakers of brands’ social presences.

1. What’s the hot new trend in social media that we can bring to our clients?

Better question: How can we optimize and improve our existing social media programs?

2. What’s the best way to get the most possible Facebook “likes” and Twitter followers?

Better question: How can we encourage existing customers to truly engage with our clients on the social Web?

3. How can we make a viral video that gets thousands of views?

Better question: How can we optimize a video so that prospective customers find it in search results?

4. How much money should we be pulling from the email budget, to support social media?

Better question: How can we integrate email and social media to increase customization and relevancy?

5. How can we convince our clients that we’re good at social media?

Better question: How can we create content in multiple forms and locations that demonstrates our expertise?

6. How can we find a social media guru to add to our team?

Better question: How can we distribute social media knowledge across the entire firm, including ongoing training and knowledge sharing?

7. How can we create a killer social media campaign that will get noticed?

Better question: How can we develop a sustainable, ongoing social media strategy that will turn customers into advocates over the long haul?

8. How can we find the most influential bloggers and get them to write about our client?

Better question: How can we find the existing customers that are already passionate about our client, and turn them into a volunteer marketing army?

Of course, there are a ton of outstanding PR firms doing excellent work in social media, including all the folks I have the great privilege to work with every day here at Convince & Convert. But there are still plenty of PR firms (and companies, for that matter) looking at social media purely as a distribution vehicle. What do you think?

Last Monday was the world premier of my new social media newsletter, the 3-2-1.

• 3 must-read articles about social media (plus a bonus from the Convince & Convert vault)
• Sent twice per week (usually Monday and Friday)
• Sent at 1pm pacific time

3-2-1: it’s the greatest newsletter in the history of social media newsletters.

If you’re signed up to receive Convince & Convert blog posts via email, or if you’re a subscriber to The Social Media Messenger – my other email publication – you should be receiving the 3-2-1. If not, just click right here and check the appropriate box on the subscriptions page.

I’ll continue publishing the Social Media Messenger after a short hiatus. I’ll be transitioning it to a monthly email publication that goes in-depth on a particular topic. If there are specific areas that you’d like to see me cover in detail, please let me know.

I’d be honored if you’d sign up for the 3-2-1 and or The Social Media Messenger. The price is right, and if you hate them, you can bail out at any time. And of course, I’d never share your email address (frankly, I don’t even know where to find it without help from my assistant, Jess)

Thanks as always for your tremendous support of me and my work here at Convince & Convert, and elsewhere.

We built our own Frankenstein. We are spending countless employee hours tweeting, retweeting, responding to tweets, figuring out whom to follow, secretly following celebs and athletes, and designing custom Twitter backgrounds.

Nobody forced companies to get involved with their customers in this way. There was no law, edict, or pitchfork-wielding band of angry citizens. We just did it voluntarily. And for what?

Certainly not because of the math.

A new research study of 1,400 U.S. consumers from ExactTarget and CoTweet (they are clients) called Twitter X-Factors shows that just 5% of Americans follow even one brand on Twitter. By way of comparison, that’s approximately the same size as the Asian American population, and you certainly don’t see the media coverage, software development, conferences, and general hullabaloo about marketing to Asians.

Put another way, the Twitter audience that’s connected to brands is just slightly larger than the population of Illinois. Can you imagine an “Illinois Marketing for Dummies” book? Or CEOs having thoughtful retreats in exotic locales to discuss their “Illinois strategy”?

On the surface, the time and effort we’re spending cultivating our Twitter followings is flat-out ridiculous. But, dig a little deeper into the behavior of the core Twitter audience, and the perspective changes.

Here are a few reasons identified in the study that the focus we put on Twitter may be entirely appropriate, and perhaps not even intent enough:

The Iceberg Effect. The actual reach of Twitter is actually double the user base. Due to embedding of tweets, people scanning tweets but not actually having an account, and tweets being picked up by search engines, 23% of consumers read tweets at least monthly.

Interaction. Customer prefer Twitter as the mechanism to truly interact with brands and learn more about them. Facebook is preferred for information about the brand’s activities, and email is preferred for product updates. Think about that for a moment. Customers follow you on Twitter not to be informed, but to be interacted with. They follow you because you answer back and treat them like an individual, if only for 140 characters. But yet so many companies are using Twitter as a post-modern headline news service. Wrong approach.

Overwhelmingly, respondents in the study prefer interacting with official, branded accounts rather than personal accounts from employees. (think @ford vs. @scottmonty) Consumers believe branded accounts are more reliable and accurate. Twitter gives you the opportunity to make your logo more than a logo, providing compassion, insight, information, and even entertainment in bite-sized chunks. Try that with a press release…

Nowhere to Run. Startling to me, but less than 1% of the participants would use Twitter as the first way they’d contact a company when they need customer service. However, consumers are much more likely to use Twitter as an escalation, meaning the people with whom you’re interacting on Twitter may already be frustrated with your organization.

Said one respondent:

If I don’t get the support I need through phone or email, I use Facebook and Twitter to voice my complaint, since a ton of people will see it. The company can’t ignore me then!”

Influence. The online population that’s creating the content that’s influencing the rest of the world is on Twitter, period. Daily Twitter users are 300-400% more likely to write a blog, review products, upload videos, and every other social behavior, than are non-users.

In fact, the research shows that 72% of daily Twitter users write a blog, 61% write at least one product review per month, and 53% upload videos.

This research raises two interesting questions:

- Forrester published research earlier this year that said Facebook users (rather than Twitter users) were the source of much of the New Influencer population. Which do you believe?

- Even though the numbers are small, is the Twitter effort worth it?

Check out the Twitter X-Factors study here.