So after being on the front page on Marketing the week before last, this week we’ve hit the pages of Campaign, with our inclusion in a feature article about, you guessed it, Twitter:

Three years into its existence, the recent media frenzy around celebrity Twitterers, including Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross, and Barack Obama’s successful use of the medium in the run-up to the US election, has seen the popularity of the “microblogging” site increase 27-fold in 12 months.

Advertisers could learn a lot from celebrity Twitterers using the site to shape their personal branding, creating a close, one-on-one relationship with their fans without constantly filtering their thoughts through a PR sieve.

Robin Grant, the managing director of the social media agency We Are Social, which advises Fry on his use of Twitter, explains: “The advice we gave to Stephen centred on being himself and having genuine conversations with people. It’s the same for brands. It’s about being human, showing your real personality and allowing people to connect with you on an emotional level.”

The article then gets quite bizarre, with Flo Heiss, the creative partner at Dare giving this advice about who should sit behind a brand’s account:

It could be a real person, such as a receptionist, or character made up by yourself

How about an imaginary friend who’s a receptionist, Flo? On to David Bain, an ‘internet marketing consultant’:

it’s cleverer when you don’t anthropomorphise it. What if an inanimate object was to Tweet, for example?

Why is it cleverer David? And what would it say? Amelia Torode, managing partner at VCCP:

It has to be a friendly, chatty brand. A brand such as Coca-Cola would be too large in its entirety. You need to work less at a higher-brand level and go down to the actual campaigns or smaller brands under the umbrella in order to start up the conversation.

Not quite as unhinged as Flo and David admittedly, but I’d point to the examples of brands like Burger King, Southwest Airlines, Whole Foods, Starbucks, JetBlue and even VCCP’s client O2, who are having meaningful and useful conversations at the higher-brand level. As usual, our friend Faris Yakob talks sense:

Previously we had a model of buying attention from media companies. Now we’ve got direct relationships so we have to earn that attention – we have to earn it by being entertaining, useful and also nice.

To be honest, there is no ‘right approach’, but there are some general principles that apply (as expressed by myself and Faris above) and then there is the hard won experience at the coalface, learning what works and what doesn’t, that brands doing it themselves (and the agencies like ourselves helping them) have acquired. Most importantly your approach should be built around, yes, you guessed it again, the business objectives you’re trying to achieve.

This diagram from Fallon’s Aki Spicer of six different potential participation strategies brands could use is a useful thought starter (each of which of course might be used in combination or not at all), but even the approaches I deliberately ridiculed above could be valid in the right circumstances. Fictional characters can work really well as part of a campaign as VCCP’s own Compare the Meerkat work shows, and I’m sure at least one of Zappos’ receptionists is on Twitter. Even inanimate objects might have their place – in fact I’ve been trying to persuade Kew Gardens to get their plant life on Twitter for a while now.

But deciding on a strategy is only the first and easiest step. The hard work is the day after day of micro-interactions with real people, and striking the right balance between the opportunities and risks presented by having a real person as the voice of the brand, which I touched upon in the hotly debated post on learning to speak human. David Armano brilliantly investigates this dynamic in The Age of Brandividualism and his recent follow-up, Battle of the Brands (both of which are required reading here at We Are Social towers):

For each brand on Twitter, there’s an individual (or individuals) behind that effort. It’s both business and personal. The two have become one. The tactic comes from a fundamental truth when it comes to the social spaces on the Web. People want to talk to other people. They want transparency. They want to know who they are talking to.

The potential reward of course, is the ability to spread surprise and delight, turn negative word of mouth into positive and to really engage people with your brand at an emotional level. There is no greater prize…

Earlier in the week, comScore released their latest figures on European social network usage, which Neville then kindly graphed in Excel for us all:

Graph showing percentage of each country’s internet population using social networks

A pretty astounding chart that shows social media’s impact isn’t limited just to the US and the UK. comScore also released data for the Asia Pacific region on the same day – anyone fancy combining the 2 sets of data into one chart?

Update: Matt Wardman has created a single chart…

When Nathan and I started We Are Social back in June, we were keen to get things right from the start, in terms of agency structure, processes and our own use of social media tools within the business. In fact, we’ve been using a wiki as the backbone of the business since before we came up with a name or incorporated as a limited company.

However, as the company grows, we’re discovering it’s not all plain sailing, with the wiki proving more useful in some areas than others, and with varied usage rates amongst different individuals, despite my clarion call to RTFW and to PIOTFW.

It seems we’re not alone:

McKinsey has studied more than 50 early adopters to garner insights into successful efforts to use Web 2.0 as a way of unlocking participation. We have surveyed, independently, a range of executives on Web 2.0 adoption. Our work suggests the challenges that lie ahead. To date, as many survey respondents are dissatisfied with their use of Web 2.0 technologies as are satisfied.

They go on to list six critical factors that ‘determine the outcome of efforts to implement these technologies’ – if you’re struggling with these sort of issues yourself, it’s well worth a read…

Earlier today, I popped along to MeasurementCamp (MMC) for a meeting with some of London’s top social media brains. This was my third or fourth MMC and it was good to see the progress made in the past year – there is a growing sense of what we’re capable of measuring, and now the focus has turned to how to structure that most effectively. Here are some of my thoughts springing from the discussion – all things we at We Are Social do and have in mind already, but MeasurementCamp was very good at crystallising them into a best practice-friendly format:

• Framing process clearly: Different channels produce different results – e.g. a customer support blog is going to generate fewer direct sales than a viral for a special offer. Dismissing those who misunderstand what a blog can or cannot do is not particularly constructive – it should be up to us to explain the process of a social media campaign and the likely effects it will have, to get realistic and significant goals agreed.
• Measure early, measure often: Measurement should not be just done at the end of campaign but as part of the process throughout to judge the difference a campaign makes. And wherever possible we should benchmark it against competitor brands.
• Not getting seduced by data: Because there are so many metrics available, grand plans for some ultra losing the wood for the trees is easy to do. Going overboard with too many numbers bamboozles us as well as the client and can make you lose sight of what works and what needs improvement. Pick & choose what you measure at the start and stick to it.

Further to the last one, there were some good ideas from the group, the idea that we shouldn’t be afraid to resort to the forms of measurement that the traditional advertising and marketing industries use, such as surveys or phone polls. These of course come with their own flaws but they still have many practical uses. And as with all these things, numbers can never tell the whole story, but they’re a good start in getting there.

Alan Wolk in Adweek:

There’s a phenomenon whereby normally intelligent people at both digital and traditional agencies decide that people will embrace their new widget or app simply because they’ve built it. It’s as if the Internet were a giant cornfield in Iowa and the mere presence of yet another branded widget or app is enough to get thousands of people clicking.

But Field of Dreams was just a movie. In the real world, if you build it, they will not come. Not unless you give them a reason to do so. That reason has to be pretty compelling. Branded widgets and apps compete for our attention with a score of very well done unbranded ones. And yet I rarely hear anyone – on the client or agency side – asking, “Why would anyone want to use this thing?”

That delusion is part of a mind-set left over from the days of “push” advertising, where the consumer had no choice (short of changing the channel or flipping through the magazine) but to hear the advertiser’s message. We didn’t get to actively choose which ones we wanted to see.

And that’s a critical difference that bears repeating. With the push method of advertising, we must take action in order not to see the ad. With widgets, apps and other online vehicles, we must take action in order to see them. People don’t stumble upon widgets and apps by accident. Which means they need to be judged by a completely different set of standards than push advertising like TV and print, the primary one being: Would anyone actually go out of their way to use it?

Make something people like and would want to use even if it didn’t have a brand logo attached to it. If that sounds like an overly trite platitude and more than a bit obvious, that’s because it is. But agencies and clients who assume a far greater degree of interest in and love for their products than actually exists often ignore this basic tenet of marketing.

Alan is right (especially his last sentence), but we should also remember that however good your branded app or widget is, you still need to get people engaged with it and talking about it for it to succeed – which, of course, is where we come in…

It took me and the team three days to recover from organising the Twestival but here we are, back to London and to work so here is our summary of the first ever Twestival in Paris…

Last Thursday morning, as most of us were just waking up in Paris and in Europe, on the other side of the world Nathan (@deliciousmedia) was already welcoming the first participants of the Sydney Twestival. Later on that day, part of the We Are Social team i.e. Robin (@RobinGrant), Chris (@qwghlm), Nicolas (@NicolasKinski) and Christian (@Mehme7) were getting ready to attend the London Twestival whilst Violette (@_vio_), Camille (@CamilleJ), Bertrand (@Bertrand) and myself (@MeToo) were finalising the last details for the Twestival Paris…

As I’ve already mentioned on this blog, blogging is very big in France, and so are bloggers meetups. But this Twestival was clearly one of the first time that Parisian users of Twitter were gathering in real life and that’s what made it interesting. Altogether, we had about a hundred Twitter users joining us at the Hard Rock Café Paris, and we were lucky enough to say hi to our friends attending the other Twestival in London, Lille and Clermont-Ferrand via a Skype video call during the evening. The evening carried on until 1am, with an open bar (of course!), a live concert of the band 1973 (including a backstage concert!) and a raffle with lots of goodies from laFraise, Skype, Moo , Spreadshirt, EBG and Artoyz to win…

We had a brilliant night – although obviously slightly stressful because we were organising it but we met lots of very nice users of Twitter from Paris and the surrounding area, and judging by the number of DMs and emails people have been sending us since, this first Twestival Paris was a great success. So thank you all for attending and helping us raise money for charity: water!

Those of us in the team who were left behind in London are now slowly recovering from last night’s Twestival in London. It was great night, as you can see from this morning’s tweets and the photos:

Here’s the organiser, Amanda Rose, appearing on Sky News yesterday evening via a Skype video call, explaining the event:

There’s also a great write-up in today’s Guardian (and, as befits my status as a Z List Twitter celeb, I made it into their photo coverage).

Thank you @amanda and the rest of the team!

I’m just back from Sydney Twestival, part of the global Twestival, and it was a great success. Although based in London, I’m originally from Sydney and it was great to see the Sydney Twitter community come out to support a good cause. Over 80 people raised over $1400 for Charity: Water, and in the process we had fun and met some great new people.

When I spoke to Time Out about Twestival, I mentioned that one of the great things about Twitter is the way that people help each other. Twitter users really give – and tonight showed how helping within a social media community can extend into giving for charity. 

We Are Social sponsored the Sydney event, and organised it with local volunteers @BernieT and @catchakiki. Big thanks to them and also to all the other volunteers who helped out on the night, as well as the sponsors that donated prizes, drinks and of course a great venue.

Check out the photos on Flickr above, and the Qik video captured by @betchaboy

Of course, We Are Social is also organising and sponsoring Twestival Paris, as well as helping out with Skype‘s sponsorship of Twestival London, Paris, Lille and Clermont-Ferrand, so stay tuned for more Twestival updates!

By the time I wake up they will be in full swing… Have fun over there, and at every other Twestival!

Yup, that is a screenshot of our Twitter account you can see staring at you

The feature article in today’s Marketing, ‘Twitter enters the mainstream for brand communication‘ covers work we’ve done for three of our clients, with the obligatory introductory mention of Stephen Fry and his 130,000 followers, moving on to part of what we do for Skype:

Robin Grant, managing director of social media agency We Are Social, agrees that, if used wisely, Twitter can help reduce negative word-of-mouth online and assist with brand building. We Are Social client Skype, for instance, uses Twitter to ‘respond to people having issues with or asking questions about Skype’, according to Grant. ‘If we can respond, they tell their friends what brilliant customer service they’ve had from Skype.’

And then some of the work we’ve been doing with Ford:

Ford took more of a campaign approach to promote its latest Fiesta. It backed its ‘This is Now’ TV campaign with blog and Twitter activity encouraging consumers to submit photos and art and design-related discussion posts. Despite Ford’s Twitter activity, though, the car marque’s communications manager Lisa Brankin claims Twitter remains ‘niche in its appeal’. She adds: ‘By itself it is not strong enough but it can be valuable as part of a wider campaign.’

Twitter’s growth is heading in the right direction, but as We Are Social’s Grant argues: ‘Brands need to think carefully about what impact any commercial use of Twitter is likely to achieve before investing any significant resources in it.’

The cover story from Fiona Ramsay about Twitter’s plan to start charging brands (subsequently picked up by Techcrunch and others), starts from a quote straight from the horse’s mouth:

Co-founder Biz Stone told Marketing: ‘We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts.’ He would not be drawn on the level of charges.

Stone said it could also create revenue-generating features to tap into the way brands use Twitter as a hybrid marketing and customer-service tool.

But Bob Pearson, vice-president of communities and conversations at Dell, said: ‘If it becomes complicated and costly, our instinct would be to move elsewhere.’ Robin Grant, managing director of social media agency We Are Social, said Twitter could charge for display ads or to access customer information for marketing.

I had quite a long philosophical conversation with Fiona about this when she was writing the article, and expressed my scepticism about Twitter charging for brands using Twitter normally (which is not entirely summed up with the quote she used, but it least got across the idea they’d look at charging for added value services rather than the standard free functionality). As I said in the comments of the article:

The challenge Twitter will face is that there’s such a grey line between personal and commercial use.

Aside from the celebrity issue, where they are clearly individuals, but using the service for commercial gain, it’s grey elsewhere too.

If I spend a lot of my time on Twitter talking about business related stuff, where does that leave me?

For brands overtly using Twitter, it’s not black and white either. Look at Ford’s Scott Monty for example (@ScottMonty), who uses his personal account to represent Ford. Even the account we run for Skype (@PeteratSkype) is as an individual not a brand (as is the same for most of Dell’s accounts). And of course Zappos famously have hundreds of employees on Twitter.

Let’s face it, one of the reasons that Twitter is popular is because it’s such an interesting mix of both your personal and your business life – in fact, unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, it lets you be the whole you. Twitter will be risking a lot if they try to change this.

Which has since proved to be correct, with Biz Stone publishing this clarification on the Twitter blog:

It’s great that both individuals and organizations are finding value in Twitter and there may be ways we can enrich the experience. In fact, we hope to begin iterating on revenue products this year.

However, it’s important to note that whatever we come up with, Twitter will remain free to use by everyone – individuals, companies, celebrities, etc. What we’re thinking about is adding value in places where we are already seeing traction, not imposing fees on existing services.