Marketing Pilgrim

Last month Twitter launched its ‘suggested users’ feature and the impact on those who were put on Twitter’s red carpet has been significant. Some of these profiles saw tens of thousands of additional followers added to their own personal profiles which created some very happy folks and, you guessed it, some not so happy people. The LA Times Tech blog has all the details but here are the high points.

Evan Williams and Biz Stone, co-founders of Twitter put this feature into place last month. When users sign up for a new account (which is happening at a dizzying pace) they are given a list of suggested users to follow. The folks at Twitter were noticing that many folks were signing up then not using the service. The hope by offering this was to get the newbies in the game. Makes sense to me since Twitter can be somewhat daunting for those beyond the early adopter / social media savvy part of the population.

It won’t come as much of a shock to learn that 48% of online shoppers plan to spend less this year, thanks to the recession. The good news is that 61% of online consumers admit that they’ll likely be persuaded to make a purchase by customer reviews and ratings.

For me, the most useful information to be gleaned from the Bazaarvoice/JupiterResearch study is the confirmation of just how important it is for etailers to target every stage of the buying cycle–not just the “buying” stage. I often tell web site owners that consumers typically follow a buying cycle which can be condensed down to just three stages–for easy recall.

A new report from Forrester Research, outlined by Groundswell, takes a look at how B2B buyers interact with social media—and by and large, they’re more engaged than their average peers.

The report breaks down the use of social media by Social Technographic role by type of social media involvement (types explained in this PPT):

The “Overall” column indicates what percentage of those surveyed fell into that type of social media activity. Note that, obviously, there is overlap between roles—Creators, who generate online content, can also be Critics, who leave blog comments, etc.

Takeaways here:

• 91% of these decision-makers consume social media including blogs, video, and customer reviews.
• 69% of Spectators use social media for business purposes.
• 55% of the B2B buyers in this survey are Joiners—they’ve created profiles on social networks.

You may have thought that the headline should read “Social Media Changes Minds” because of all the wonderful things that social media adds to our lives (I’ll let you determine what wonderful things it does for you). But across the pond there’s concern that social media is actually changing the brains of young users. Of course, this story wouldn’t be any fun if it was simply saying that the kids are getting smarter and smarter because of endless hours in front of a screen while forming ‘relationships’ (more on this one later). Au contraire! Apparently the brains of young folks are, in effect, being rewired by these kinds of interactions and this rewiring is not a positive thing.

<Oprah Voice> It’s book contest time! </Oprah>

OK, so here’s the deal. You’ve read Tim Ferriss’ “The 4-Hour Workweek” right? Great book. Inspiring stuff–and certainly makes you want to live Ferriss’ life, right?

But, it also misses the opportunity to precisely explain how you can get your workweek down to, heck, 30 hours–let alone 4! Well, that’s where Leo Babauta’s “Power of Less, The: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential…in Business and in Life” comes in!

It’s a surprisingly quick read, but is packed full of actionable advice for de-cluttering your life, focusing on your priorities, and getting more out of business and life. Heck, even Tim Ferriss’ praise adorns the book’s cover.

Listen to me speak about online reputation management long enough and you’ll hear me talk about the importance of "hosting the conversation" when under attack.

Here’s a great example of that, courtesy of Last.fm which found itself the victim of a "vicious and completely false rumour." The music service tried what many companies try:

I denied it vehemently on the Techcrunch article, as did several other Last.fm staffers. We denied it in the Last.fm forums, on twitter, via email – basically we denied it to anyone that would listen, and now we’re denying it on our blog.

And, the "denying it on our blog" part is the best way to host the conversation. Instead of playing rumor "whack a mole" Last.fm’s blog post hit Techmeme, achieved 1177+ Diggs, dozens of comments, and positioned itself as the official response to the allegations.