I am the co-host of a weekly podcast called The Bella Buzz with  Desiree Scales, the CEO of Bella Web Design. We have great conversations about topics related to online marketing. I am posting the programs here for the Overflow audience. This is episode 86.

Long time Twitter users Desiree Scales and Joe Magennis speak with Brent Herd, the Director of Southeast Partnerships for Twitter, on this episode of The Bella Buzz podcast.

In the face of feature enhancements by other major social networks, Twitter continues to provide a simple to use platform for communications.  With 140 character limitations and minimal user disruption, the service continues to be a stronghold for messaging and breaking news coverage in particular.

It is possible that many listeners were not aware that Twitter had opened some satellite offices with the intention of helping brands take advantage of the sponsorship opportunities.  Brent opened the Atlanta office in January of 2011 and has dealt directly with some of the major residents of the city such as Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola.

He has gone beyond just a simple sales role and has witnessed first hand how some of these companies are integrating Twitter into their total customer service package.  Delta has their own Social Lab set up with flat screen panels to monitor Twitter activity.  They use the real time information that they are collecting to respond to customers, to be proactive, and even manage connecting traffic. They have  a specific Twitter account @DeltaAssist for these efforts.

There are a variety of different sponsorship opportunities available on the platform, Promoted Trends, Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts  ..   Brent gives us a nice breakdown of each segment, specifically pointing out the company’s intention of making them as organic as the conversations on Twitter themselves.

• Promoted Trends – Giving the advertiser the ability to own one of the hashtags that appears in the Top 10 trends on Twitter.  It is analogous to a placement on a web site home page.

• Promoted Tweets – (interesting factoid; It took Twitter about 3.5 years to get to 1 billion tweets, now they do 1 billion tweets in about 3 – 4 days!)  Advertisers now have the ability to put together a very targeted campaign, including geo-targeting, so that a finite group of users will see a sponsored message.  These can be very affordable campaigns since they are based on CPA type models.  They use the term “engagement” as a measurement, which includes Replies, Retweets and Click Throughs.  Current engagement statistics are 3% – 5%, much higher than standard click through rates on the web.

• Promoted Accounts – helps brands build a follower base in a very quick time period.

Another interesting approach to using Twitter and the ability of a brand to develop a “personality” is the way that Coca-Cola uses the @DocPemberton account.  This is a fictional representation of the inventor of Coca-Cola, who lived in Atlanta during the 1800′s.  This consistent messaging represents a form of branding that is less intrusive than the standard dissemination of corporately crafted fare.  (Baseball fans will be reminded of the @OldHossRadbourn Twitter account)

To wrap up our conversation, Brent fills us in on the Analytics dashboard platform for publishers, with hints at features to come. Also, keep an eye out in the coming weeks for the deep integration of Twitter with the new iOS devices such as the iPhone 5.

We want to extend our sincere thanks to Brent for joining us on the podcast, and we look forward to another interview in the future.

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Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from iTunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The iTunes Store.

This week we dive into a topic that might be considered a little bit contradictory to something we have always espoused in the world of social media, establishing multiple profiles.  Demonstrating transparency and open communications has been a mantra towards establishing long term credibility in the new world order of marketing.  In today’s episode we talk about how having a different Twitter profile can keep the conversation nicely segmented.

First we chat about our fine telephone and internet service provider here in Atlanta called Digital Agent.  Howard Hunter and the crew have been taking care of us for almost 10 years now, and we find days when the service goes down as infinitely bizarre.

And, by the way don’t forget to set up a Firefox browser plugin called FoxMarks to make sure that you can hop from machine to machine and still maintain your same bookmarks and passwords for ease of use.

We have our business profiles on Twitter that are focused on social media marketing, advertising and other topics that cross over into the personal such as music, baseball, families and anything else that happens to cross our minds.  We are fairly open regarding what is going on.  Recently, we have discovered some value into taking our Baseball related profiles and having very specific conversations and relationships around just that topic.  Nothing else flows into the stream, making it easy to engage in the subject at hand… Baseball.

For businesses, we have seen a trend where corporate communications guidelines are directing or supressing what can be tweeted, so some are choosing to set up their own personal profiles to segment the topics of conversations.  It could be detrimental to the direction we want to take social media clients in, which is to be open and not to try to spin the conversation.  Let the customers help you to direct the communications.

We don’t want this strategy to be misconstrued .. we are simply trying to silo the conversations so that Baseball is what we know we will find there.

The tools that we have including Tweetie, Twitterific, Tweetdeck, Seesmic .. all of the applications make it much easier to manage multiple accounts now.

Is there is difference when considering managing multiple Facebook accounts?

In fact, in our case we do have an account that is used to manage and set up client Fan Pages so that the activity is not mixed into the normal stream that friends would see.

More and more decisions will have to be made from a political standpoint regarding letting a client or co-worker get access to a full Facebook profile.

The opening and closing theme for the Overflow Podcast is called The Information Age, by Anthony Fiumano and you can find it at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Overflow Podcast directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

OK, we just wanted to have a little fun with this week’s Overflow Podcast.  We recorded late on Friday afternoon, coincidentally the day after Twitter got hammered by a DDos attack.

We had decided earlier in the week that we were going to talk about the types of tweets that we could do without. Tweets that are not relevant, add debris to the stream and could simply be eliminated. Using Friendfeed this week, where there are terrific conversations held in real time,  in an easy to follow interface, simply reinforced the amount of junk floating in the Twitter stream. It’s Twitter flotsam and jetsam.

We’ve always seen Chris Brogan say that a great blog post is to make lists .. so here is our list of the types of tweets that we have to navigate around and cause us to lash out .. or maybe not lash out but basically just unfollow.

Are you someone who puts these tweets out into the stream?

• Twittascopes – please, save your horoscope for the funny papers.

• Multiple autoposts, all at once using services such as AutoTweets, Twitterfeed, Proxifeed, and the myriad of other automated ways to send out a tweet. If you must do this please try to spread out the timing of these messages because we skip them when they appear all bunched together in the stream.

• Auto re-tweet services where users of the service are automatically sending retweets of all the others within the network, no matter the relevancy of the message.

• The person who posts mudslinging comments in the political arena. If all you can do is be insulting it’s time to unfollow.

• Tweets that “Guarantee 400 Followers per day!” …. Here is the sarcastic post that Chris Brogan did about this recently.

• Any twitterer who starts with the use of term BREAKING NEWS before every tweet.  Nice try but it’s not going to work more than a couple of times.

• The misdirection quote .. inserting an inspirational quote with a link back to a book or sales program is not cool.

• The unfortunate DJ party on Blip.fm while following on the iPhone.  Not an issue with the twitterer themselves, just a technology / Apple issue. There are great Friday night DJ’s on Twitter who would be awesome to listen to, unfortunately not on an iPhone.

• And dare we say it .. we love all of the #followfriday props that we get from friends and followers, but it’s run its course.  The original purpose of promoting interesting people for others discover was noble and important early on, however it has now gone overboard and has lost its impact.  There is a right way to recommend someone and there is a wrong way to do Follow Friday. Let’s just call a timeout and find something new that we can do.

Well, that’s our list.  We avoided the well documented auto-dm and sponsored tweets, but we’d love to know if you have tweets that you just can’t stand in your tweet stream. Let us know in the comments what we have missed .. we’ll amend this list and give you credit!

The opening and closing theme for the Overflow Podcast is called The Information Age, by Anthony Fiumano and you can find it at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Overflow Podcast directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

In the initial segment of the Overflow Podcast this week, we come clean with the music that we have used for intros and outros for each episode and admit to using copyrighted material from our ITunes collections.

It has been a fun component of the post production process, finding the perfect song to compliment the topic whether it be from a lyric, the artist or simply the tone of the composition.

However, since we are trying to set a positive example for the rest of the podcasting community we want to respect the ownership rights of the artists who created the music, so it is time to tap the well of the Podsafe Music Network to find our Overflow theme music.

We come from an creative background and would not be happy if someone else was using our output without any form of credit, so we want to abide by the Creative Commons attribution standards that have been set.

The opening and closing theme for the Overflow Podcast is called Showdown at the Bridge, by Eric Dietrich.
The topic for this week revolves around the ability of social networks, and Twitter in particular to spread unsubstantiated rumors simply due to the ease of distribution.  Recent examples of these rumors include a Twitter sactioned TV series that caused quite a stir among the “celebrities” on line until it was denied by Twitter directly.  There was also a rumor that Patrick Swayze had succumbed to his illnesses that was even picked up by the mainstream media, a denial from his publicist was required.

Cameron and I had recently been having conversations with marketing directors for tourist destinations, and we both made sure to point out that an initial step to using social media effectively as a marketing tool would be to listen for any mentions online.  The tools such as search.twitter.com and Google Alerts allow for instantaneous identification of conversations … including unsubstantiated rumors … that require some form of response.

By not listening, a negative comment or rumor might get away from a brand where a quick initial response would have quelled the rumor and put the fire out immediately.

The mainstream media now has added pressures to get stories out quickly generated by the ability of online communication to spread so rapidly, so we have to question their ability to fully source a story before they run with it.

There is alot of tremendous value in the ability of the Live Web to deliver messages on behalf of brands, however it does warrant having strong listening tools and plans in place about how to respond to communication issues.

Some brands / destinations may require a 24/7 monitoring and alert system that will ensure that adequate responses happen in a timely fashion.  It will all be based upon the potential exposure as to how closely the monitoring needs to take place and how that monitoring will be staffed. A destination such as DisneyLand should have community managers who are on duty at all times to ensure messages are handled.

EDITOR NOTE: As we talked about the ability for an app to generate messages automatically based upon Alerts, I was considering that there is a possibility of subscribing to an RSS feed via SMS messaging that might do the trick.  I have found where Google is testing a Labs application called SMS Channels in India which performs the exact function I am looking for.  Here is an article that describes the process.

How do you watch for rumors spreading? Has anything happened to you that you became aware of and needed to quickly respond to? Let us know what the situation was and how you responded in the comments below.

The opening and closing theme for the Overflow Podcast is called Showdown at the Bridge, by Eric Dietrich.

You can subscribe to The Overflow Podcast directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

The direction that we are headed on the web is towards more and more live interaction. On this Overflow Podcast we discuss some recent applications of the live technologies and review the perceived pros and cons of this evolution of the web.

Jim Kukral is an example of an internet marketing practitioner who has embraced the live web, and uses his Ustream Channel as a way of inviting real time interaction.  Recently, Jim was speaking to a group in Cleveland and streamed the presentation.  He posted a tweet inviting others to join in, and participants could interact with his presentation via the chat functionality on Ustream.  (Note, I’ve noticed they have added a simple Twitter capability on the show pages as an alternative to the chat.)

A major application of live web technologies will piggyback on location based tools such as GPS or Google Latitudes, which will distribute content based upon where you are at any given point in time.  This will be of particular interest to local business such as restaurants and service companies.

We talk on the podcast about a music festival that decided this year not to offer a live stream of the annual event.  Rumors circulated about funding situations and conflicts with selling recordings … but a common consensus stated that the festival was concerned that live streaming was a hinderance to tickets sales!  We want to make sure to turn that perception around and state wholeheartedly that distributing the content to a worldwide audience can only capture a wider community and grow the ticket base.

And for those that absolutely cannot attend or will not become a ticket buyer, you have new content to build a monetization strategy around.  Look for ways to attract some form of conversion.

Sporting events have become a great place to participate in the live web by participating on Twitter.  Watching a baseball game with an entire community of Red Sox fan conversing on the Twitter stream has become an extremely enjoyable element added to broadcast.

It has gotten to the point where NOT having that interaction during a live sporting event is a negative.  In order to preserve the final results of the Nascar race from Talladega before watching a Tivo’d version, avoidance of Twitter was required at all costs. Watching the event later that night was lacking because there were no more conversations taking place live and in real time, because I was the one who had time shifted my viewing.

From a business perspective there are certainly live web applications. One is encouraging live tweeting of conferences and meetings via the use of a hashtag, to promote and expand delivery of the content that is being presented to the audience.

We are also about to see an explosion of Virtual Trade Shows as a way to eliminate exorbitant travel costs, booth design and development, and costs in terms of time.  Having a real time interaction with vendors and partners through a well designed, immersive, online experience might just be complete enough to supplement the face to face events.

We are looking for any input that listeners might have regarding good retail or consumer goods virtual trade shows.  Please share with us in the comments if it has worked for you.

Does the downturn in the economy propel the expansion of live web technologies?

NOTE: After recording this podcast this morning, good friend Desiree Scales , co-host of The Bella Buzz podcast, appeared on a live streaming video show http://startuplucky.com/live/.  Way to go Desiree! Great use of the Live web …

We start out today’s podcast with a shout out and sincere thank you from Cameron and I for the encouragement and input that we received as a result of our previous episode entitled Listener Feedback Welcome. Keep those cards and letters coming!

That lead us into the first half of our conversation about the fact that mainstream media outlets including CNN, Fox, PBS, ABC, NBC, CBS .. and MSNBC have all recently run stories about Twitter.

This topic came about after Cameron noticed a couple of my tweets while I was watching the Morning Joe host Willie Geist interview a reporter from CNBC named Dennis Kneale, who said things like “Twitter is the next Facebook” and “Twitter was invented to make me feel unhip and old” and “it’s like a new restaurant, everyone goes there because everyone goes there”.

Clearly there is a problem when CNBC’s Media and Technology Editor is oblivious to the power that the Twitter platform provides to the user base. My tweets were to show disgust that he said “it’s to make fun of people” and a reply to @hardaway that mainstream media is showing their ignorance and eventual obsolescence when they do segments showing a complete lack of understanding of the service.  Then to top it all off, Dennis Kneale admits that he doesn’t even have a twitter account himself! He is certainly a big fan boy of Facebook though as he keeps trying to compare the two.

Watch the segment for yourself here.

Comedy Central and Jon Stewart have taken on the platform for a skit which is a bit more tongue in cheek so we’ll give him credit. We also discuss an interesting interview on The Charlie Rose Show, which put Evan Williams, Co-Founder of Twitter at the table to discuss the business.

An enlightening moment arrives near the end when Williams says to Charlie Rose discussing his joining Twitter, and he says “we’ll point you out and you’ll get hundreds of thousands of followers” … which is certainly a strategy that Twitter has started to initiate where they are trying to drive up follower numbers for high profile users in a less than organic way via the suggested user list.

How do you feel about this? Is this a service that undermines the organic discovery process at the heart of what the platform does, or is it simply a good way to get new users kickstarted on their way to using it?

We next turn our attention to the social networking platform called Flickr, that has been built to compete against the photo sharing sites such as Snapfish, Smug Mug, Photobucket, etc.

I have a photostream and here is  Cameron’s photostream.

As with all social networking, there are ways to subscribe to other users photos, make comments on the photos, and even purchase the photos through Flickr.

An example of a brand strategy can be seen by what the podcasters at CoffeeCast.fm are doing with Flickr, trying to develop a social network of coffee drinkers who post photos of their experiences, and tagging them with the term CoffeeCast. Each tagged photo will appear in the Group and on the Coffeecast.fm site via a Flickr widget.  This is a great way to encourage user generated content and brand loyalty from the audience.

Cameron loves to check out the inspiration from the “interesting today” category on FlickRiver.  Other apps that we use include Flickup for the IPhone and My Flickr as a Facebook app.

(Update: I mentioned in the podcast that Flickup is a free app, but I just happened to check the App Store and it is listed as $2.99.  Not sure if I got an early free version or not, but I don’t recall paying for it. JM)

There are some great terms regarding the protections that contributors are provided when uploading to Flickr.  As you load photos you are able to decide what type of copyright protection you wish to assign to the image including the multiple variations of the widely used Creative Commons licensing. CC attributions could be a topic of multiple episodes, but we suggest looking at the development of the project and the extraordinary impact it has had on the burgeoning creative community online.

Also, keep us in mind as you post photos to Flickr. We’d love to get a link from you with your photostream .. we’ll post them here on Overflow.

Current TV has been a significant talking point at Fluid Media since the network launched back in late 2005. We would use the Current business model to demonstrate to clients and in lectures, the convergence of web and television with an added topping of user generated content (UGC).  We would constantly tell clients to find the network on their cable systems, watch the programming and check out the web site.  Then figure out how it should be incorporated into their web strategies.

Today in the Overflow podcast we revisit these aspects of the business model plus the exciting addition of “twitterfied” content produced during the recent election cycle and planned for the future.

The basis of the programming is user produced “pods” that are submitted via the web site and voted on by the registered users of the site, with top vote getters making it to broadcast. Pod content can consist of everything from News, Politics, Music, Comedy etc.. plus the network producers will constantly develop assignments for a specific topic that they would like to run on TV.

Concurrently, advertisers provide users with the bare minimum of material to work with such as a logo bug, tag line, headline, video or billboard and allow them to produce their own commercials called VCAMs.  It costs very little to the advertiser since they don’t have production costs .. but if the ad is successful for them, they can choose to pay the producer and run it on other media outlets.  So they’ve witnessed the production cost savings & have had their own mini focus group to see how effective the ads are prior using the creative on other channels.

Here is an example produced by 21 year old Andrew David Watson (no relation) of Philadelphia.

During the election coverage this fall, Current rolled out the integration of a live Twitter feed on the screen as the debates were taking place called Hack the Debate. So as you were viewing what the candidates were saying, you could also see what the great community of the electorate was saying simultaneously.  It has to have been a double check for the statements and claims of each of the candidates, in the long run it will continue to ensure the the campaigns of the future remain more factual.

Information that has been disseminated recently indicates that Current TV is going to continue this type of integrated content with Twitter in the future, and plans to launch another programming channel focusing on movie content.

Let us know …. Do you watch Current TV?  What do you think about the quality of the content, the format of the programming and especially the VCAM user produced advertising?

I was sitting in the rocking chair during the Labor Day holiday contemplating the future for my young daughters … no, not the rocking chair in the grandpa kind of way, but the rocking chair as the only thing that is helping soothe little Lily at the moment!

Reviewing the conversation during the past week with Sam Harrelson and others regarding the significance of Identi.ca and other microblogging formats, I couldn’t help but wonder about the very long term.  I can see how federated communication platforms will be applied in the near term but I started wondering about the scenario when my daughters are teenagers and will not want good ole’ Dad subscribing to their posts.

There are numerous accounts in the media demonstrating that among the current 100 million users of Facebook, friending between parents and children takes place, for good or bad depending on your point of view.  Compartmentalizing through the Privacy Controls is probably the best approach to keeping some things away from helicopter parents on Facebook.

But, that’s not really the point that I was pondering.  I’m more interested in the whole closed universe versus open platforms.  If Twitter survives as the dominant micro-blogging platform and it remains THE place to be .. how are fathers schooled in Social Media practices and daughters Twittering their friends about the best parties supposed to exist on the same platform?







It’s just not going to happen .. somewhere there will be an exodus of one these groups and my guess is that it’s the younger, more fluid group.

What happens if the parent is responsible for marketing a product with a demographic target audience that overlaps with his children, and he is compelled to use the same social networking tools for business as his daughters use for communicating?  Do both generations simply bite the bullet and accept that it’s just the new world of communications and all messages are open for public consumption?

I think we may end up with a privacy setting built into micro-blogging platforms.  Dad will be able to target the open social networks that are most likely to contain key influencers and evangelists for his product, while his daughters develop a seperate network with strict peer developed access (invitation only, etc.), without fear of an embarassing message popping up in front of Dad.

It’s a different dimension considering I would normally just add both of their names into my Track client to see messages across all open Laconica platforms, but disabling the track function from a closed, private network will allow it to flourish among a particular group hoping for exclusivity.

This can also be applied to the Enterprise community as well.

What do you think?  Will we have closed communities concurrent with the open development underway? How will micro-blogging look 10-15 years from now?

On August 17, 2008 Liliana (Lily) Jade Magennis was born at 3:20 pm. Mom was super awesome in her preparation and execution! At 12:30 we thought it would be a dinnertime delivery but the nurse checked in and declared “you are at 10, we’re going to have a baby soon!

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This event relates to befluid.com in a personal way obviously, but by sharing the experience through the use of social networks it relates to the business side as well.

The best way to present the topic is to simply link to a “dotcompadre” named Scott Jangro who went through the experience literally days earlier. Follow the post’s comment thread to see my input.

This past Saturday night I watched the future of “television” .. at least in the form that I personally believe to be the direction that the format is headed. It all started with a twitter post, and ended up with me staying up late at night watching a live stream of Wilco playing at the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago.

After a day full of the usual weekend responsiblities, I was kicking back ready to watch a baseball game and reading through current tweets.  The following message from someone with the handle ATTBlueroom (I’m sure it is someone who serves in a Community Manager role) caught my attention, “Broken Social Scene and Wilco are up next on tonight’s Lolla webcast.” I am a huge fan of the band Wilco, so I got very excited to log on and check it out.

What I experienced made me realize that the famed “convergence” of television and internet that has been spoken about since the early dotcom days is upon us.  The stream was flawless on my dsl connection and all I wish was that I had a better sound system on the computer so that the full music quality could have been experienced.

The added feature of communicating with others via Twitter while simultaneously watching the show only added to the excitement.  Actually attending the event in person would be the only better shared experience.

Some observations:

• Apple TV and other web connected television appliances are going to explode on the scene shortly as the next big consumer appliance
• Using Twitter as a way to announce programming is a must for any broadcast channel
• ATTBlueroom actually needs to do a better job of monitoring the conversation to interact with viewers.  I had two people directly state that they were having trouble with the feed and it would have been a perfect opportunity for some direct company involvement (Contact me if you want to talk about my ideas!)
• I suspect that the issues were due to only having the option of Windows Media Player as the format for the stream, and possibly it would serve to have a variety of options based upon the users preferences.
• Television plus Twitter (or another communication platform – gaming consoles allow for actual conversation) for live events is going to be an integrated part of the viewing experience.  It will be important to allow the viewer to directly compartmentalize the communication being received however.  Non-relevant tweets during the broadcast would detract in some cases, which leads to more sorting of conversations into silos along with a search (track) functionality.  This is making me reevaluate the silo interface of TweetDeck, which just needs to become more stable at this point.
• Sporting Events, Concerts, Award Shows, Political Debates … any event that is being broadcast where interaction with others in real time adds to the experience will benefit from this convergence.
• It’s still unclear how the entire monetization strategy will work in these live events.  They could have interjected lower third promotional messages or sponsorship logos without harming the quality, but I believe that branding messages will need to be more subtle to be acceptable.

Wilco demonstrated why I believe they are the best band in the land right now.  The AT&T Blue Room broadcast was very well done in terms of production, while needing some assistance in the community interaction area.

I was extremely glad to have been part of the event, and wanted a big encore from the band as they left the stage.  I know we’ll see more of them and more of these types of events down the road though.