I get asked this question by CEO audiences a great deal. It seems that somehow many CEOs have been told that Twitter is big so they had better get on Twitter. In my informal survey of CEOs that I know, most cannot name one valuable benefit they have gained from being on Twitter other than being able to brag about their hipness to their YPO, TEC or PEO group.

So what advice do I give?

For CEO’s of large firms:

• Most CEO’s of $100 million+ organizations do not need to get on Twitter themselves. Twitter represents a powerful new social phenomenon that is part of the whole user-generated content revolution (also called Web 2.0) but you can read about that here without wasting your time joining Twitter and then racking your brain every day for something to post that your General Counsel won’t freak out about.
• You should be blogging before you get on Twitter, either to an internal audience to help with vision casting or to an external audience for thought-leadership.  If you use Twitter as a way to share your blog posts externally then fine but do it in that order.
• You should ask a marketing savvy thought-leader in your organization who is 1) under 35 and 2) already on Twitter to come back to you with a recommendation on how your organization could use Twitter to grow its business. There is probably a subject-matter expert or thought-leader within your organization who could command an audience on Twitter but in all but a few cases that’s probably not you, the CEO.

For CEO’s of small firms and sole proprietors:

• Sure – get on Twitter – but don’t waste a lot of time on it. Twitter can be effectively used to grow your digital footprint. Make sure you fill out the short bio section CAREFULLY!! It’s what will show up in a google search. This is test for people who can’t articulate their value proposition in a succinct way.
• Focus on getting yourself a large network of potential customers and influential referers on LinkedIn and Facebook first. Then figure out how to use the status updates on Linked In and Facebook to position yourself to your network the way you’d like to be seen, without annoying or alienating them.  Then get yourself a blog and learn to use it. And then you can add Twitter to the mix as a way to repeat your status updates to another audience or to point to your blog posts. But do it in that order.
• Make sure you figure out how to write posts and status updates that accomplish what you want them to. Try role playing being a person reading you on Twitter, or via your LinkedIn or Facebook status updates. What will the reader want to read? What will they find useful? What will cause them to think of you as the __________ person? You get to fill in that blank with what ever brand you hope to own. Take a look at this humorous list of the “12 most annoying types of Facebookers” before you start.
• Use tools like ping.fm and friendfeed to automate your posting to multiple networks to save you time.

Thank you for visiting www.strategycube.com

We recently launched a Facebook application to support Campbell Canada’s Help Hunger Disappear™ campaign. As of July 27th the app has 12,846 users.

Deliverables:

1. We developed a custom Facebook application to allow users to give their friends virtual cans of Campbell Soup. Campbell Canada will then donate a matching real can for every can given and accepted on Facebook. We focused on making the application simple to use and easy to spread virally.
2. We built Campbell a professionally designed, custom website through which visitors could explore all the parts of the Help Hunger Disappear™ campaign, and be directed to the Facebook application.

Execution:

Click here to go to the application’s homepage on Facebook. You need to be logged in to Facebook for the link to work.

Visit the www.helphungerdisappear.com website.

The Facebook Application:

The www.helphungerdisappear website

Commentary:

Facebook users have not reacted that positively to overtly branded applications. Brian Morrissey mentions a few of the high profile brand failures in this article from ADWEEK. As I wondered as to why this might be (and how to avoid becoming another statistic) I hypothesized the following:

• Facebook users care most about how their network perceives them. Social status is the currency of Facebook.
• Most actions on Facebook are done by users to enhance how their network feels about them. i.e. they send their friends a funny video, a photo or a fun game so they can be seen as the source of humour. They post photos of the hot guy kissing the new girl at the party so that they can be seen as the source of news, gossip etc. See the graph from McKinsey & Company below.

• Activities that allow the user to increase their social status are likely to do well.
• On judgment, I thought that many Facebook users would think that being seen donating to the foodbank was good for their social status as long as the application did not look like purely a shameless sales pitch.

In 3 weeks the app reached over 8,100 users starting from two people and spreading virally. The app has reach 12,846 users as of July 27th.

We’d appreciate any comments or feedback you may have on the application.

Thank you for visiting www.strategycube.com

I spent the last 2 days at SES Toronto 2009, a global conference on Search Engine Marketing. Aside from catching up with friends and old colleagues, I enjoyed meeting Emanuel Rosen, the author of The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited and his was by far the best session. I liked it so much I bought his book and I swore I would not buy any more books until I had read the 5 beside my bed. Sound bite: 73% of buzz (viral sharing about brands) is in person, 17% by phone and 10% online. The top category people talk about is …… Food! Three meals a day… I guess it makes sense.

Most of the booths (other than Microsoft, Google and Yahoo) were small tech startups providing incredibly niche services that most of my CEO clients would be hard pressed to understand.  And there is so much hype in this space. If you are not careful you can start to feel like you are a total loser because you didn’t name your kids based on the available domain names and google keyword bid estimates. Everywhere you turn someone is taking a photo with their iPhone and posting to Twitpic and Facebook. I had to send someone into the bathroom ahead of me to make sure the coast was clear.

Microsoft has a nice big booth promoting their new search engine bing.ca. Bing looks interesting and I’ll give it a try. I like competition – it keeps everyone on their game.

I came away with several good ideas on how to develop more successful social media campaigns for CPG clients – which is one of the biggest challenges out there. Here are some other random things I learned:

My big learnings from the SES Toronto 2009 conference:

1. You must stimulate your happy customers to talk in order to overcome the 30% of brand buzz that is negative and comes from people who have never used your brand.
2. We imitate some people and we distance ourselves from others. Fairly key ☺
3. If you want buzz you must give people something to talk about. There must be a good story.  Check out “Will it blend iPhone” on YouTube below this list or Tom’s Shoes.
4. Dispersion matters. People are clustered into social silos and you must get buzz from across a diverse group of people, including across different social clusters, to predict success.
5. You have to prepared to do 10 social media initiatives to get 2 winners. Paraphrased from Jim McDowell of BMW.
6. Mobclix is a great tool for iPhone app developers. Great stats on best apps by category.