I know you don't think you do, but here's why you need to be on Twitter

Okay, I get it. You don't understand Twitter, you don't see value in it, AND you think it's a fad. But here is my case for why you should sign up today (and I'm not even getting a commission for this).

1. Satisfy your need for celebrity
You have two options, you can either read about pop culture icons in the pages of US Weekly, or you can get off the sidelines and talk to them directly! All your favorites are here, Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Suze Orman, Justin Timberlake, P Diddy, Oprah...the list is extensive. Twitter enables you to follow and be followed by these celebrities giving you direct access to what they're doing right now, or on what projects they're working. Sometimes you might even get a gem and watch Lindsay Lohan break up with her latest boy/girlfriend! AND, you can send them a message and have an actual conversation! Too cool.

2. Promote yourself and/or your small business
It's all about "me," isn't it? If you have a fledgling blog or business (particularly in the consulting, beauty, real estate or online marketing industries), or are responsible for promoting the business for which you work, Twitter can help you big time! Using related sites like TweetLater.com and MrTweet.net, you can automate the process of finding, attracting and starting relationships with the people you want to reach around the corner or around the world! Plus the search engine optimization you get from it and the direct links to your site can't be beat! If you have a Web site, blog or other social media presence like Facebook, you need to add Twitter to your promotional mix. I'll give you some more "how to" steps in a future blog post.

3. It's free and not a huge time-sucker
Unlike some other social media sites, you can get on Twitter, make a quick post (under 150 characters), check to see your number of followers or direct messages, and be back to whatever you were doing in a very reasonable amount of time. Now, if you have the time, you can spend hours searching for and following people (up to a maximum of 2,000 per day) to have a huge number of followers, but it's not necessary.

Here is information from LinkedIn regarding what business people think of which social media applications are important. Twitter seemed to have come up big here. See the results at http://polls.linkedin.com/poll-results/35931/uxtqg.

Two ways in which a campfire relates to direct marketing

Last night I invited a few neighbors over to discuss a first-ever block party for our development. I put a fire in my new fire pit so while we talked, the kids could roast marshmallows for s'mores and the adults could watch while we discussed ideas and plans for this party.

Long after the last red-hot embers turned to tan-colored ash, two things about last night made me think of direct marketing. The first was the way the wonderful smell of campfire smoke still still followed me around. The second was about our conversation of getting support for this party.

A great direct marketing campaign not only has all the mechanical elements such as headline, offer, expiration date, an image and messaging, but it also hits home with an emotional response. Seeing those kids, some of whom have never been near a campfire and the adults who felt like kids again made it clear that campfires create a positive emotional response. In your next campaign, try taking your audience back, waaay back, to a simpler time in their lives when they were kids and associate your brand with something they love about their own time growing up. It's something that will follow them around like the aroma of campfire smoke long after your direct mail piece comes and goes.

Direct marketing is all about the numbers, and so is life. During our conversation, we knew that we would need full support of our community to make the block party happen, so we had to think like direct marketers. We had to calculate the numbers for all the households in our block, and the number it would take to get sufficient momentum for the next planning steps. Unlike the acceptable two percent response rate typical in our industry, we're shooting for an ambitious fifty-plus percent! That will take a seriously targeted, multi-channel, multiple-touch campaign in order to reach that goal. But like a good direct marketer, I'm up for the challenge of blowing away acceptable numbers with a great results!

Twitter Profile Pic Testing

I saw a guy I happen to follow on Twitter do something interesting. He replaced his profile picture with an edited version in which he now had flowing, silky blonde hair framing his square, stubbled face. It was a bad photoshop job, but you can't really tell when you're looking at a 25x25 pixel thumbnail of it.

It will be interesting to see if he gets a lift in clickthroughs to his profile. Of course, once a visitor sees the image a little larger, they may choose not to follow him.

This got me thinking about the importance of how a profile picture is perceived by fellow Twitterers at such a small size. It's the only thing you have to capture someone's attention, so it should be clear, as attractive as possible, and probably accurate if you don't want to just bait people to your page. What your actual page looks like is another matter, but of equal importance.

Perhaps I should do some profile picture testing myself and see what happens. I think I'll skip the photoshop addition of long, blonde hair though, it just isn't me.

Media Overload

The dishes were washed, the baby put in bed, and I was all set to get comfortable and watch some American Idol when I remembered that there was a presidential press conference tonight.

I began watching the conference and listening to President Obama explain the budget that came out this week, when I decided to also check my e-mail. Of course, while I was there, I checked out Facebook and Twitter and thought about putting in another blog entry.

So I've got on the TV while following what George Stephanopoulos was saying about it on Twitter, and that's when it hit me, this may be more information than I need (or can properly digest) at one time. The thing about integrating social media with offline channels is that it becomes very easy to get swallowed up in media overload!

I'm sure at some point a proper balance will be struck and folks will find an appropriate place in their lives for social media, but until then it's funny to see how ingrained these things can become into our lives.

New media requires new metrics

So you've got a Facebook page, a blog, a Twitter profile and you've posted some great videos on YouTube. Now what?

Okay, so far so good. Any direct marketer will tell you, however, that it's all bogus until you can measure its success against your own quantifiable goals. With today's social media applications, that's tricky. It's not as simple as response and conversion rates, and forget about seeing a clean ROI. But don't let that stop you!

New media requires new metrics for success. For example, your Facebook page might live by such metrics as new fans per month, or posts per day. Your blog might contain measurements on number of new followers per month or number of comments per post. Twitter can tell you the number of new followers per month if you keep a record of it as you go.

These aren't hard metrics on which you should run a small business, and definitely not by which you'd want to run a large business, but rather are directional in letting you know you're creating an impact. If you properly integrate your social media efforts and use tracking code, such as that provided by Google Analytics, you'll be able to see how each piece works together to create an experience for your customers and prospects.

Take a good look at what is important to you in reaching your goals and go from there.

Why do we love social media so much?

I should be in bed now.

My wife has probably given up waiting for me and is fast asleep. I'd join her, but I just need to tweak my Twitter design and check Facebook one last time, in case I missed something vital in the last 20 minutes.

Some people seem surprised by the social media phenomenon, but it's really no mystery at all. People were built to be in relationships with each other, they just can't help it. And social media makes it ridiculously easy to dig up old high school buddies, feel connected to celebrities and people of power, and scratch that itch for a connection with another human being.

If you ask me, social media is here to stay. This digital version of friendship and communication is only going to get more prevalent and more ingrained into people's everyday lives. In fact, for millions of people around the globe, that day has already come.

Why is Twitter so popular, even though few know how to use it?

The more time I spend on Twitter, the more I see it dominated by four groups of people. CEOs of large corporations, celebrities, online marketers looking to promote their small businesses and news media types. When I talk to these people, or others, about Twitter, few really seem to know why they are there or what they're doing. It seems that Twitter is a new tool for which we don't yet have a defined need or purpose, but we're committed to using it anyway.

For me this begs the question, who is driving this commitment, users who are convinced of its coolness or effectiveness or some genius marketing type at Twitter? Either way, its popularity is growing, even if no one can explain why. I guess this is the part where I confess to having been on Twitter for more than a year now (but only for research purposes only, of course). See my experiment at http://twitter.com/phillipbarnes.