I am currently working with Michelle Rogerson on a research project studying the rise of popular user-generated content online. In particular, we are interested in identifying the reasons why some content (such as some YouTube videos; see Top 10 YouTube videos) gain star status, whereas others are barely paid any attention to. We surmise that network properties as well as author characteristics both contribute to such contrast in circulation and popularity. I will talk more about the research project in future blogs. But right now, as part of the project, we are conducting an exploratory survey of people’s usage and sharing of user-generated content. We would appreciate it if you could please spare 10 minutes of your time to fill out this short survey. I will post the findings on my blog once the survey concludes.
Best Practices — Effective Use of Twitter
What is it?
In this entry, I am going to discuss two organizations: McKinsey Quarterly and Brooklyn Museum. These two organizations are very different in many ways. But they share one commonality in that they both use Twitter very effectively in gathering customer intelligence and strengthening customer relationships. McKinsey Quarterly’s Twitter username is @McKQuarterly; and Brooklyn Museum is simply @brooklynmuseum.
Why is it a good idea?
Many companies use Twitter or other microblogging tools to bring customers more timely updates about the business. This is what I call a “broadcast” model. While it is useful in its own right, McKinsey Quarterly and Brooklyn Museum went beyond that by practicing the following:
(1) Attach links to tweets so that users can choose to drill deeper into a topic if they are interested. Not only does this offer a higher level of interactivity to satisfy user needs, but with proper tracking it also provides useful insight on what interests customers.
(2) Use @replies functionality to build a dialogue with customers. For those who are not quite familiar with Twitter, one can add @username into one’s tweet to reply to a user or to refer to a specific user. Both Brooklyn Museum and McKinsey Quarterly closely monitor user comments and use @replies to respond to those comments in a timely fashion. This approach makes users feel appreciated, which encourages future participation and builds loyalty.
(3) The third tactic that I would like to discuss is used by McKinsey Quarterly. They have turned their twitter account and their large number of followers (7645 as of right now and it’s not hard to imagine the high relevance of these followers) into a marketing research machine. Earlier this year, for example, McKinsey Quarterly published an article on Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work. Then using Twitter, they asked their followers what organizations get the most out of Web 2.0. Combined with a special hashtag (#web2.0work), they were able to track responses from users. The company then updated the original article based on the ideas they received from the Twitter community (of course they posted a tweet about that update too). Does it get much better than free marketing research?
Announcing PingTweets
I have been using Twitter for a while now under a personal account. As of yesterday, I have finally decided to separate the more business and technology-oriented tweets into a different public Twitter account (@PingTweets). It will allow me to provide more frequent updates on business and technology ideas in between my blog updates. I will be updating my blog soon to show PingTweets on the sideline. In the meantime, you can follow PingTweets at http://twitter.com/PingTweets.