My sporting year looks like the profile of the 20th stage of last year's Tour de France. Flat for the main part with a single majestic peak rising out of the relative flatness.

The Tour itself is the Mont Ventoux of my annual sporting calendar, a monolith event of such epic proportions that its shadow looms large over everything that precedes it.

Like most cyclists I am a details freak. I revel in cadence rates, riders' gear ratios and other banalities that would be bed-wettingly dull to most of you reading this. 15 years ago I would clear my daily calendar between 6pm and 7pm and drink up every scrap of information that the Channel 4 daily Tour highlights could give me but it was never enough to sate my thirst for these details from the Peloton.

Similarly, it would never convey the rider dynamics, the feuds and alliances, the sheer and brutal pain that each rider would endure as the Tour wound its inexorable way towards Paris.

Then came the Social Web.

What social media gives cycling is the means of giving detail-obsessed fans like me an instant hit of the tedious, granular information that I crave. It lets me see Cav's cadence as he rips up the Champs Elysees or Brad Wiggins' heart rate as he goes backwards down the Col de Madeleine.

I can go to my 'Pro Cycling' group on Tweetdeck and see petty squabbles between riders unable to resist the lure of Twitter whilst holed up in a Novotel with nothing but a sponsor's smartphone and a travel kettle for company. Or the Peloton's praise for someone's superhuman feats, such as riding 200km with a broken arm. I can go to Flickr for Hi Resolution images of the day's suffering or stream the race live on my iPhone through the ITV Tour App. In short, there is so much for me to see and do that I am almost certain to do no work for most of July.

A few Tour-based treats for the other bike geeks out there;

1. Keen to show off its capabilities, Microsoft have built an App for Bing Maps that visualises each stage of the tour and provides stage results and weather information. http://mashable.com/2010/07/03/2010-tour-de-france/
   
   
2. Mapmyride have created an App that allows you to 'virtually race' the Tour by uploading data about your own day's ride. The app uses your stats to create a virtual time that you would have achieved if you had actually ridden that day's stage. I havent used it but i imagine it might be quite depressing. http://beta.mapmyride.com/tdf/
   
   
3. This is one for real data lovers. HTC (the smartphone guys) and Team Columbia have joined forces to bring the ultimate cycling Google maps mashup. The App gives realtime information on the Team's riders including speed, power, cadence and heart rate, as well as their real time position on the road. http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/mytrackstour/
    
4. The ITV iPhone App lets you watch live streams of the Tour on the go as well as providing news and stats around each stage, team and rider. http://www.itv.com/sport/tourdefrance/iphoneapp/
    
5. Stalk your favourite riders on Twitter. http://twittercycling.tumblr.com/

The most exciting election in years finally came to an end this month. I didn't hear about our new Prime Minister on the radio, TV or the morning papers, I first heard the news, via a tweet. This seemed to be a fitting way to find out about the outcome of Britian's first Social Media Election. In this post I am going to talk about the various digital initiatives the 3 major parties put into place throughout this election but also, more crucially, the various digital initiatives which everyday people put in place.

The Tory's Cash Gordon website is an example of how dirty politics can go so wrong in this world of social media. The site was planned to be a social media game where Tories were given points for performing tasks such as recruiting friends and reading news articles. If the idea seems a little strange to your marketing ears, that is because this site was shoehorned into a site originally built by the Republican strategists David All Group. It was actually developed to galvanise opposition to Barack Obama's healthcare reforms. Several campaigns have been built into this template without really making any changes. Have a look at no energy tax to see how much customisation a $15,000 pricetag, gets you.

Blatant copying isn't even the biggest oversight of this campaign. As you will notice, it automatically pulls in any tweets with the Hashtag #cashgordon. This is all well and good if people agree with you, but it was only a matter of time before people were tweeting things like "Tories taste like cocks #cashgordon". They really didn't think that through.

So far the Tories aren't scoring high in the 'understanding social media' stakes, but wait, it gets worse. Moments later it was worked out (by people arguably more technologically savvy than the Tories) that html code could be sent via tweets, which would then run on the site. The first piece of code through the system declared in Large Red Type "David Cameron is a Cunt"... the next redirected the site to Rick Ashley's video "never gonna give you up" at this point the Tories were definitely rick rolled.

It was only a matter of time before someone tweeted some code to redirect the Cash Gordon site to a pornographic image of overweight gay OAPs. It was at this point the site was pulled off-line as the Tories went into 'damage limitation' mode. But the story doesn't end there, as far as social media is concerned, this was a triumph for the people who had sabotaged the site. And as often happens in cases like this, at this point the people of the social web move to the next stage, and start to create content. Within hours of this event there were hundreds of tweets / blog posts and satirical info graphics. Thus ensuring that this whole mess was spread even further around the web. One massive own-goal to the Tories.

Record numbers turned out for this election, I think this is down to the electorate being more informed about the candidates that they are voting for. The websites They Work For You and the Guardian's election 2010 site were able to strip away the legal language of the Parliamentary record, and tell you the voting record of any MP in simple terms For example, are they for or against the war on Iraq, are they for or against equal gay rights, and a dozen other key issues of the past 5 years. This meant for the first time "the man on the street" was informed enough to be able make their local member accountable for how they have voted on key issues important to them.

Voter Power finally put an end to the pub conversations which start with "it doesn't matter who I vote for". This site lays out in simple graphs how safe your local seat is, constituency size and percentage of discarded votes. I do wonder if this site was enough information for people from "Sheffield Brightside & Hillsborough", (where they have the voting power of 0.253 of the Average UK resident) to "Afron" (where they have the voting power of 1.308 of the Average UK resident)

The site My Gay Vote was one of many niche sites which popped up informing voters on individual issues. All this information was delivered in bite sized chunks, designed to fit into 140 characters. As all campaigners tried to encourage the masses to share their message they became painfully aware that a tweet can move faster and is less accountable than a newspaper article. Negatively, depth of analysis is lost in a tweet culture where everything is reduced to black or white. Most of these sites don't show the source of their data and aren't "authorised" by a political party, which means that someone with a little Search Engine Optimisation experience can have an equal footing online.

Britain loves the underdog, and came out in force to defend Nick Clegg when he was attacked at the beginning of the campaign by the right wing tabloids. All over Twitter the ironic #nickcleggsfault Hashtag was attached to everything from "I have lost one of my socks #nickcleggsfault" to "Ash cloud is covering England again #nickcleggsfault". The irony of this is that when the parliament was hung and Nick Clegg assumed the role of King-maker, the #nickcleggsfault Hashtag made a resurgence, this time without the irony.

In a digital landscape where MP's records are easily digestible and where constituents are vocal in announcing their views and influencing their followers, does this mean people are going to stop voting along party lines and continue the march away from the two party system?

South by South West in Austin, Texas is the largest web technology event in the world. I had been sponsored by the UK Digital Mission to go there and launch DASH our web app product for streamlining the process of setting businesses up online. Despite the global recession the event has grown rapidly over the last few years from several thousand to 15 000 delegates. This was the first time the event had taken over the entirety of the ACC - Austin's gargantuan conference centre.

Before I went I had a vision of distributing thousands of flyers, talking briefly to hundreds of eager new users desperate to blog and tweet about my stunning new app and returning victorious with a database full of new DASH clients. As you can probably tell I am normally the guy building the tools for other people to go out to market with. This was my first experience of product marketing and I was in at the deep end.

Unsurprisingly I wasn't the only guy out there with something to sell. In fact I think virtually every tech company I could name had a presence there and they were chucking money at it. The trade show felt like a busy Souk with every trick in the book (free t-shirts, Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, booze, celebrity endorsement) being employed to grab the attention of the delegates. Additionally this was a festival of learning, most people were here on their own time and money, so likely to be a little resistant to direct sales unless I was wearing hot pants and handing out beers.

By the end of Day 1 I had given out 10 cards and done 5 lengthy demos. Plan A - Connect directly to end users - Scrapped.

Practicing what I preach a little more I decided to try and target a selection of key influencers and journalists. The poster boy for the start your own business crowd (DASH's primary audience) is a guy called Gary Vaynerchuk. The problem is that everybody wants a piece of him. Whilst I chased him from room to room I noticed a few regular faces, his support staff and PA, and although I actually got to my man in the end it will be those guys that I try and schmooze on twitter now.

I then started to look at the fringes of the conference and made appearances at events called "core conversations" where audience participation is encouraged and the speakers are the up and coming Garys of tomorrow rather than the social media celebrities of today. I used my insights as a web designer to contribute my thoughts on branding and technology which built a platform for talking about DASH. At the end of those sessions I was handing out 50 cards a go. (I should give a shout out here to the fantastic Ian Sanders for inviting me to talk in his Unplan Your Business session

I began to use the same tactics with journalists at the conference by effectively trading my personal commodity - content - in exchange for plugs on DASH. Look out for me on Techfluff.tv and Computer Weekly shortly!

Finally good old fashioned networking at the parties created some of the best opportunities. By not overtly thrusting DASH down peoples' necks and bonding with them personally I am pleased to say we will now be working with one of the world's top interface designers (who is also pals with most of the bay area startups), an advisor to angel investors who is bored on gardening leave and feels like a challenge and the promise of a few mentions on the larger tech blogs.

From a business point of view the success of this trip will be judged by moments in time rather than hours of hustle.

Getting something quickly is not the same as getting something of quality, more often than not the 2 things are directly opposed. Equally true is that unedited or unqualified information has little value in the long term. So why is the real time web getting everyone so excited?

I have always used the internet to research and learn, it is my first port of call when I need information. More often than not I begin my hunt for information on a search engine, hardly revolutionary I know. Being barraged by unedited opinion isn’t high on my list of wants when I’m trying to find information, so I wasn’t thrilled when I heard that Google, Bing and Yahoo were all falling over each other to be the first to provide real time search results. Needless to say, I for one was not immediately convinced by the value or power of the real time web.

It wasn’t until I watched @QueenRania speak about the power and influence of real time web, at the Le Web 09 conference in Paris, that I was forced to re-think. She spoke of how being a queen is ‘clouded in protocol’ that prevents her from being able to talk to people (or rather, people being able to talk to her) on an equal level. She espoused the virtue of the internet for making all equal, it is a forum where titles mean little and content is everything. So why not use this powerful medium to evoke change? It is not radical to suggest that the web can be used to change the world for the better, but can the real time web actually save someone’s life in just a matter of hours, or even minutes? Or can it rally the internet’s vast population of dormant, armchair spectators to turn their "analogue activism" into physical change? Queen Rania thinks so.

She cited the Ketsana typhoon and subsequent floods that struck the Philippines. This was a devastating natural disaster that left many people in life threatening danger. With the help of social networks, quick thinking locals were able to send real time information on the worst affected areas, directing aid to those desperately in need faster than would otherwise have been possible, probably saving numerous lives. What’s more, the sense of urgency borne out of seeing the situation unfurl in real time prompted people to donate money and volunteer their time through the likes of Twitter, Plurk and Facebook. This is without question, an example of the unique benefit of real time information being disseminated to a vast and proactive audience.

Queen Rania also talked about the recent post-election protests in Iran, a subject that was widely reported in traditional media, but only truly tangible when viewed through Tweets and live video footage from the streets of Tehran, seen in real time. The immediacy and importance of the situation was evident to all, and people from all over the world were spectators of live events as they unfolded in a country not commonly associated with media freedom. The real-time audience were able to feel a connection to these events that would not otherwise have been possible.

But people do not have long term memories, especially when it comes to online. And in the same way that real-time can cast a spotlight on a subject, it can take it away equally as quickly. A few weeks after the protests in Iran began, Michael Jackson died. Suddenly the web was awash with information on the King of Pop, Iran was old news.

Never before had a subject changed the digital landscape so quickly, rumour turned into speculation which turned into fact, all within minutes and all played out before our eyes. Proof, if it was needed, that real time information is a powerful force.

We just have to learn to harness this force, according to Queen Rania. She gave a rousing speech which I watched via a live stream. Seeing it live made it all the more impactful. She was there to ask the audience of Le Web to lend their online support to her charity, 1 Goal, which campaigns for the right of every child in the world to have access to an education. After her speech, I went straight to 1Goal and signed up, something I would not have done if I hadn’t felt so part of the moment. Whether I, and the countless others who signed up as a result of Queen Rania’s speech, go on to actively support the charity remains to be seen.

If nothing else, real time web can bring information from anywhere in the world to a diverse and receptive audience. But the information that is out there does not become valuable or important until there are subsequent physical and positive actions. We are privileged to have the world at our fingertips and up to the minute information at our disposal, however, as Queen Rania so eloquently put it "[…] online activism is fleeting when there is no personal effort involved."

Stephen Fry’s now famous “wobble” where he announced to the world that he was going to retire from using Twitter after someone accused him of being boring was discussed last week by the great man himself at the IAB conference.

Exciting times here at Codegent, we've just completed and launched a new website for Nickelodeon.

Nickelodeon presented us with an interesting challenge, they needed a website that could showcase their on-air summer content. This content consisted of (amongst other things) a competition to find SpongeBob Square Pants' biggest fan. Here's an example of one of our favourite entries so far. The other main part of the site was TEENick, a magazine style show aimed at teenage girls.

The challenge came in finding a way to create a cohesive site that would encourage the 2 different audiences to engage and interact with these seemingly disparate elements.

We wanted to incentivise people to travel through to the different parts of the site so we designed 5 SpongeBob cards that we 'hid' on various pages. When a user found a card they could click on it and were then given the option to download and print the card. 4 of the 5 cards incorporated a marker which, when printed and held up to a webcam, would display a 2D message from a character from SpongeBob. Finding the fifth card unlocked an augmented reality, 3D SpongeBob which the user could interact with by pressing their space bar. You can view a demo of the SpongeBob AR here:

These cards helped us to tie the site together and to generate page impressions, however we didn't want to incentivise people to travel through the site if we couldn't be sure that they were engaging with the content, so we constructed a points system that rewarded good behaviour, such as commenting, rating entries, entering the competition etc. Points are accumulated during the visit and when you reach certain milestones you unlock Nickelodeon 'goodies'.

We also wanted the user to feel a bond with the site which is why we added a badge creator. This allows users to create a badge with their unique username and design, this badge is displayed whenever they leave comment on an article. Here's an example of the badges in action.

The competition has had hundreds of entries and from the stats we've got so far, page impressions and time spent on site is looking good. The augmented reality aspect has had great feedback in terms of how it looks but also how it gives the user something new, exciting and valuable in exchange for their time and attention.

Definitely something we want to do again soon!

"It is not that the internet is a particularly recent invention. It has even had its very own economic crisis. So why are companies still struggling to engage with it?

Of course, every company worth its salt has a website, not least those who have sent their executives to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

But the discussions here suggest that many companies are still struggling to move beyond having a colourful website towards really using the internet to their advantage.

And to make things worse, hardly any company knows how to cope with the rise of social media - the Facebooks, Twitters, blogs and YouTubes of the digital world."

The above comes from an article on BBC News written by Tim Weber during the World Economic Forum. Weber reports that most companies simply haven't got a clue about social media, and either bore, ignore or upset their potential audiences. Even if there are some great examples to prove to the contrary - Zappos on Twitter, Blendtec on Youtube, MyStarbucksIdea to get consumer feedback or Southwest Airlines on Facebook - I agree with Weber that most companies are struggling to enter the social media world and are not properly using the power of the network to gain opportunities and build relationships.

Does your company really get what social media is all about?

Social Media is people having conversations online. These may be your customers, employees or investors. It is the shift from a broadcast and unidirectional mechanic to a many-to-many model. Conversations are facilitated by online tools that people use to share content, stories, opinions, insights, experiences. These tools include blogging, social networking, micro-blogging, video-sharing, bookmarking, photo sharing, wikis...

Social Media is empowering people. They are now able to create, select, share and converse on any topic they like. As already discussed in a previous article, there is nothing you can do about these conversations happening online. You don’t have control anymore! However, you can certainly participate and engage with people using these Social Media tools. The key is to start now.

Well, that being said, you might be one of those who don’t know where to begin to join the conversation. That’s not a problem at all; it is never too late to connect. What you do need are some guidelines. The thoughts and links below will help you have a better idea about where to start.

You may have already started to enter the social world. After all it is shiny, new and so many people are using it. It’s the ideal channel for advertising! But that is the wrong purpose, you need some direction! Why don’t you read on as well?

Fundamentals of a Social Media Strategy

"We need to be on Twitter", "Oh, and we want a blog" Don't jump into social media just because everyone else is doing it. Take a step back and take a closer look at the POST method invented by Forrester’s analysts Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li authors of Groundswell, one of the most important books on the phenomenon of Social Media. POST stands for People, Objectives, Strategy and Technologies. It’s a four-step process for social strategy which will help you define the appropriate tools to implement in order to get the most of Social Media.

Firstly, People. Know your customers and assess their social activities. You should already have a rough idea of who you are targeting but most importantly you should identify how they use social media technologies. The Forrester’s Social Technographics™ Ladder classifies consumers into six overlapping levels of participation: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and Inactives.



If you are not sure how to profile your customers, you can use the Social Technology Profile Tool. This free tool will allow you to define your audience’s social computing behaviour. Just select age, country and gender to see the result.

Beyond Forrester’s Social Technographics™ Ladder it is highly recommended to listen and monitor the good, the bad and the ugly. The list below offers some great FREE tools to listen and learn what your consumers are saying about your brand, how they participate, the tone of voice they employ, the information they are looking for etc. The only advice I could give is to be prepared for what you might discover.

Google Blog Search - Google's index of blog posts.
Google Trends - shows amount of searches and Google news stories.
TECHNORATI Search - search the blogosphere.
WhosTalkin - social media search tool that allows you to search for conversations surrounding the topics that you care about most.
SocialMention - social media search engine that searches user-generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and microblogging services.
HowSociable? - provides a simple way for you to begin measuring your brand’s visibility on the social web across 22 metrics.
Twitter Search - Search keywords on Twitter which "self-refreshes".
TweetScan – search for words on Twitter.
Twitrratr - distinguish negative from positive tweets surrounding a brand, product, person or topic.
Twilert - Twitter application that lets you receive regular email updates of tweets containing your brand, product, service.
Hashtags - Realtime Tracking of Twitter Hashtags.
Friendfeed Search - Conversation tracker.

Objectives - Ask yourself what you want to accomplish. What are you trying to achieve with Social Media? No, getting rich is not the answer! Although an effective strategy should pay off financially in the long run with increased brand awareness and customer loyalty. So do you want to:

• Listen to your customers?
• Talk to them?
• Support them?
• Energize your best customers to evangelize others?
• Embrace them and their ideas?

If you don’t know where you want to go, how can you know the direction to take? Stop utilising Social Media because it’s cool, slick and popular and use it because it is effective in helping you to reach your goals. Deciding what you want from Social Media will directly determine the best strategy to adopt and the right tools to use.

Strategy - plan for how relationships with customers will change. Start figuring out what will be different after you have implemented the tools. Determine the strategy for achieving your objectives.

Technologies - Despite the impressive number of social media tools available, you should only join and participate in the platforms that matter to you, and make sure you don’t waste your time in the ones that don’t. (ie: Building a blog just because it's trendy and because your competitor has a blog) But honestly, if you have properly determined your people, objectives, and strategy, then you can easily decide what tools are appropriate to you: wikis, blogs, podcasts, content communities, micro-blogging, social networks...

Some final tips before you really join the conversation

• Always be yourself, real, human, transparent, helpful, and give more than you get.
• Try to humanise your brand as much as you can.
• To really see the result, invest time into it and to resource it properly. It takes time to develop relationships in the social media world. Finding your BBF (British Best Friend) in one tweet is exceptional. Think of Social Media as a long-term strategy!
• Remember that you’re not in control anymore. Members are.
• Relationships are the new currency in Social Media (see The Essential Guide to Social Media)
• Stay connected on a constant basis and be responsive.
• Don’t broadcast yourself, instead contribute to the conversation and provide something of value.
• Finally, keeping it simple is sometimes the best route.

At codegent we have been helping to develop our clients’ social media strategy as well as benchmarking them against their competitors and tracking their reach and results. Drop us an email if you would like to find out more.

I hope this post will give you a better idea on how to develop a successful Social Media strategy. Please feel free to share your own experience on entering the Social Media world.

Next time, we will look at how to measure your social media effort.

Illustration credit: Matt Hamm

Have heard about our latest development?!! Don't tell me you have never heard of Twilert, I won't believe you! Twilert has been a real buzz machine since its launch a few weeks ago and in this world where empowered users can express anything they like, you had better start using it straight away! Before looking at Twilert world’s coverage, let’s first explain how it works and how it can help you...

Twilert stands for Twitter + alert.

In a prior post, I mentioned the manual monitoring tools like Twitter Search or Tweetscan. But wouldn’t it be far better to receive regular email updates of tweets containing any keyword you want to monitor?

Twilert is an email alert/notification service for Twitter. It’s like Google Alerts but for Twitter! This Twitter application, built by the Codegent Team in less than 3 weeks, is an amazing tool for people who need to listen what is being said about their name, brand, products, services, industry, employees...

Twilert is much more than a mere search alert service. By using the "Advanced settings", you can filter relevant tweets by keywords, author, recipient, location, link-location, and attitude (positive, negative or neutral). For a bit more insight on the features, here is a video created by a Twilert user:

Today, Twilert has 2000 users in 70 countries, receiving more than 5000 Twilerts. Many people are talking about Twilert on Twitter and on their blogs both here and abroad! Google Blog search shows that there are over 7,000 blog posts about Twilert. Below you can appreciate a small bit of this amazing global buzz:

English:

• Chatting with the man behind Twilert - the new Twitter alert service
• Twilert makes it easy to follow tweets about your clients. (And your agency.)
• Twilert: Tweet alerts via e-mail
• Two ways to track brand buzz on Twitter to suit your information diet
• Twilert: digital data mining and identifying motivated audiences

Spanish:

• Twilert: Alertas de Twitter para seguimiento de marcas o parejas
• Twilert: Alertas por correo de Tweet interesantes
• Twilert: Recibir alertas para determinadas palabras en Twitter

French:

• Twilert, un Google Alert dédié à Twitter
• Twilert - Alerte par mail de certains Tweets
• Twilert : Alerte mail Twitter

Brazilian:

• Acompanhe a opinião do pessoal do Twitter por e-mail
• Twilert, um aplicativo Twitter que rastreia palavras-chave escolhidas por você
• Twilert: Receba por e-mail tweets relevantes

Deutsch:

• Twilert: Benachrichtigungen, wenn bestimmte Begriffe getwittert werden
• Themen-Monitoring bei Twitter mit Twilert
• Twilert schickt Twitter-Mails

Italian:

• Scopri se su Twitter viene citata una determinata parola con Twilert
• Twilert, monitora una parola su Twitter e ricevi degli alert quando viene citata!
• Twilert: Rimanere aggiornati in Twitter via email

Japanese:

• www.socialmedia.jp
• web-marketing.zako.org

Amongst all these blog posts about Twilert, 3 of them in particular drew my attention:

Firstly, KidTechGuru, a 14-year-old boy from Singapore, who’s probably one of the world's youngest professional bloggers and technology expert, explains in a great post what Twilert is all about and how it works.

Then, Twilert was recently cited in a post on Mashable as a tool to help you focus on the signal rather than all the Twitter noise.

Finally, The social media guru Guy Kawasaki, author of Reality Check, wrote a really interesting post on How to Use Twitter as a Twool listing Twilert as a tool to monitor what people are saying about you, your company, and your product.

In addition to this great coverage on blogs, Twilert was named Mashup of the day on the 5 December 2008.

Via word-of-mouth the news is spreading fast; the tool is powerful, so why don’t you give it a try at www.twilert.com? Set-up any keywords you would like to receive alerts about and start interacting with other twitter users discussing topics aligned to your keywords.

What is twitter?

Twitter is what we call a "microblogging" service, allowing you to post frequent tiny updates on what you're doing. It is a free way for friends, family, co–workers and other to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length, also known as "Tweets".

Users can receive and send updates about what they're doing via the Twitter website but also through several other ways. Check out the official Twitter Downloads page and the list of all third party applications on the Twitter Fan Wiki.

As of October 2008, Twitter claims to have over 3,200,000 accounts registered. Twitter is the most popular microblogging service, but other similar services have emerged: Identi.ca, friendfeed, Plurk, Jaiku (acquired by Google end of 2007), Pownce and also Yammer known as the enterprise version of Twitter.

Why you should get on Twitter?

People on Twitter talk about where they are, what they like, hate, do, plan, read, eat and they also communicate about their good or bad experiences with brands. Indeed, Twitter is a very good place to LISTEN to what people are saying on your products, your services, and to learn about their experiences with the brand. (See my last post: Do marketers and consumers understand each other anymore)

Conversations happening on Twitter are public, searchable and even trackable. To find out when anyone mentions your brand name, your product name, or the name of your employees, you can use the Twitter search tool or Tweetscan. A great feature allows you to subscribe to any keywords and get alerts whenever a new Tweet appears!

By listening, you will be able to spot who is encouraging those conversations and more importantly why. Only then, join in the conversations, follow any person who talks about you and who looks interesting and make sure you reply to anyone talking about your brand, even if you don't have a solution yet. By answering their questions, responding to their opinions, and engaging with them in a real human voice, you'll positively surprise most Twitterers. You can even expect to generate a positive buzz and inspire a blog!

There are some great examples: Michael Arrington complained publicly on Twitter after Comcast support failed to resolve his issue. Comcast was actually listening and settled the matter quite quickly. Michael Arrington posted an article on his blog about it: Comcast, Twitter And The Chicken (trust me, I have a point).

Another similar story started when the famous blogger Louis Gray tweeted about the issue he had to run on his blog with Disqus, a third-party commenting system. One hour later, Daniel Ha, co-founder of Disqus replied to Gray and manage to help him to integrate Disqus comments on his blog. Gray was so pleased that he blogged about it: Disqus' Excellent Customer Service Enables Comments Integration.

Companies already using Twitter

• Comcast is reaching out to customers online and tries to improve its customer service.
• Southwest Airlines answers customer questions about ticket prices, flight delays, news...
• Whole Foods Market posts details about discounts, recipes... and are quite interactive with twitterers.
• The CEO of Zappos shares details of his life with more than 15,000 "followers" and he also encourages his employees to join, currently 460 employees are on Twitter.
• Dell has several Twitter accounts for offers, news, promotions, communities, blogs...
• Ultimate Rugby Sevens (UR7s) uses Twitter to publish insider Rugby Sevens news.

If you want to get a complete directory of brands using Twitter, the Social Brand Index offers a very good listing of companies on Twitter.

Some tips when using Twitter as a part of your Social Media Strategy

1. Remember it's all about honesty. Be transparent and authentic with people.
2. Include a real name on your Twitter profile and not just the brand name. Yes, you are running this Twitter account for your company but there must be somebody writing all these Tweets! People want to know who they are talking to. JetBlue is doing well by providing the customer support employee's name currently on duty:
   
   
3. Make the most of the "Bio": use this section to explain why you are on Twitter and to give important information like an email address. Comcast for instance gives the customer support contact:
   
   
4. Listen to people talking about you both negatively and positively. But also try to find people with similar interests, who are passionate about your industry. For example, if you are a food company, look who's talking about recipes, diet, healthy eating... Then follow those people. The screenshot below is a good example of what you shouldn't do! How do you want to build a two-way communication if you are only talking to and about yourself? By following people you show you care for them and you are willing to listen to them.
   
   
5. Interact and communicate using the "@replies": Twitter is not a broadcast medium where you can only talk about yourself and your products. It's all about engaging and creating a real dialogue with people! Help them to solve problems they encounter with your products/services and offer them value.

These are just some tips I learnt and which I thought it is worth sharing with you. Please feel free to make any comments or to share your experience using Twitter. I'm also using Twitter so, if you wish, you can follow me here.