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Happy Twitter Addict
This is part 1 of the Products I Can’t Live Without series.
For about the last six months I’ve been wanting to clean out my Twitter feed and reorganize my lists. I had been following back everyone that follows me, and it had just become too hard to find good content regularly. Twitter is my main source for news and content (I have two computer screens set up at the office – one with TweetDeck up all the time, and the other I use for the rest of my work). And, when I’m not at my desk I’m checking Twitter about every hour during the week. So, not having a steady stream of quality content was driving me a bit crazy.
Over the holidays, I finally had a chance to revamp my Twitter. And, I set up new rules on whom I’ll follow.
I used two standards to set up these rules. The first, Tony Hsieh‘s rules on what to post on Twitter. He uses the anagram ”ICEE” to remember it.
- Inspire
- Communicate
- Educate
- Entertain
I generally used these rules already for what I post on Twitter, but now I’m using them as a benchmark for whom I follow too. I want people and brands to inspire me, communicate with me, educate and entertain me.
Similarly, I used the AOL’s definition of valuable original content (which I wrote about here and here) as a benchmark for whom to follow. Per AOL,
Unique Content + Quality (trusted, fresh, relevant, authentic) Content = Valued Original Content.
With curation running rampant on the web (note, I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing), I come across many people sharing the same content. I want a steady stream of new (or, unique) content. So, I’m going to start following more people that either write original content and/or are excellent curators of content. In both cases that content has to be highly relevant to my intrinsic interests and their manifestations (social media, technology, entrepreneurship), and the person tweeting the content must be a trusted/authentic source (e.g. a successful VC or entrepreneur, an innovative marketer, a trusted journalist or blogger etc.)
The New Rules
So, here are the new rules for whom I follow:
- If someone I know or have met follows me, I’ll follow back (friends, colleagues, industry professionals, etc). These are people with whom I’m going to want to communicate
- I also will follow anyone that I deem will provide me with valuable original content that inspires, educates or entertains me (again, these individuals have to be sharing content that is highly relevant to me and have authenticity in the subject of the content they’re sharing)
- I will follow/follow back anyone that makes an intelligent remark about or reply to one of my tweets. A simple retweet is not enough, and the individual doesn’t necessarily have to agree with my tweet. S/he just needs to add value to the conversation – to be a valued community member, as I write about here
- I follow products that I regularly use, and that I’ll want/need updates on
And, that’s it. Four simple rules.
Lists
To help me organize my stream and community, I set up the following lists
- big-fuelers - Big Fuel is a social media agency I used to work for. This is a list of people I worked with there, and helps me keep up with them
- wcg-ers - WCG is the marketing and communications agency I currently work for. Again, this list helps me keep up with my colleagues
- su - Syracuse University is my alma mater, and we have a very tight Twitter community. This is a list of anyone I’m connected to from SU.
- startups - is a list of VCs, entrepreneurs and people I know that work at startups
- marketing - is a list of everyone I know and follow in marketing (note: this list used to be called social media marketing, but really social media is ubiquitous across marketing channels. So, now the list is just called “marketing”
- clients-past-present - is a list of brands I currently work with, or have in the past. It partially serves as a disclosure should I tweet anything about them, but also helps me keep track their activities
- products - is a list of products I use regularly and want/need updates on
- testing - is a list of individuals I’ve decided to follow/follow back, but want to test out their content before I put them in my main “filter” feed
- filter - is my main feed. It’s the only list/feed that I refer to regularly. This is a list of everyone that has passed the follow test and are providing the best content (e.g. I don’t need the brands in the “products” list in my feed all the time; I just want to reference them every once in a while. So, they’re not included in the “filter” list)
- nyc
- la
- san-francisco
- austin
- seattle
- boston
- boulder-co
The location lists are based on cities where I have lived, travel to and/or want to travel to. I’m hoping these lists will help me figure out people that I can connect with when I’m in those cities. Some I’ve met in person, and some I’ve only met through social media. Either way, connecting with them in person when I’m in town will help deepen those relationships.
The Result
Since revamping my Twitter stream, I unfollowed about 500 people, so now I’m only following 361 people. I actually went through and looked at every individual’s profile and tweets before deciding whether or not to continue to follow them, and how to list them.
My “filter” list/stream is now on fire. I have a constant stream of quality content – more than I can keep up with really (but, that’s a high class problem and a much better situation than the one I was in before). Also, I’m testing a product called Undrip - a San Francisco-based startup that is attempting to help individuals filter through all the noise in their streams and identify the best content in real-time, or from the last 24 hours or 7 days. I’m hoping this product will increase my efficiency in consuming and curating quality content for my community.
I’ve also lost about 60 or 70 followers. But, considering I un-followed about 500 individuals, that’s not so bad. Plus, it’s about the quality of the community, not the quantity of it. I preach that to clients all the time, and it’s the truth. I’d rather have less, but more engaged individuals following me than more, but less engaged individuals.
In fact, I have 590 Twitter followers, 441 Facebook friends and 391 LinkedIn connections (1,422 total across the three networks on which I’m most active; many of those people are duplicative – i.e. I’m connected with them on more than one of the networks). Klout measures my True Reach (the number of people I influence, both within my immediate network and across their extended networks) at 826 people. That means I’m influencing/engaging with 58%+ of my community at any given time. I’d say that’s pretty good!
My True Reach on Klout
I also noticed that, since revamping my Twitter stream, my Network Impact (which measures the influence of my network) increased about 10 points to a score of 33. So, not only am I now engaging with a higher percentage of my network, but that network is more influential on average!
My Network Impact on Klout
I was already addicted to Twitter. It’s my first source for news and information that I care about, and a way for me to connect with people and share ideas. But now, after the revamp, I’m a happy addict. More than ever, Twitter is a product that I can’t live without (or at least don’t want to). Thumbs up!
Related articles
- 5 Tools to Battle Social Media Content Overload (hubspot.com)
- Top 10 Tips to Tweet your way to 1000′s of Followers (socialmaximizer.com)
- How to use Twitter to market your company (premierlinedirect.co.uk)
- 5 Types of Twitter Account #Fail (themodsocial.com)
- How Twitter Fits Into Your Social Media Strategy (dreamgrow.com)
- 5 Easy Fixes for the Most Common Twitter Faux Pas (hubspot.com)
- Twitter Etiquette (accesscomptech.wordpress.com)
Building a Content Platform
Yesterday, I discussed content as a platform. Today, I’m going to provide tips for building your content platform.
The 90-9-1 Rule
The 90-9-1 Rule is more of a benchmark, but it states that 1% of the online population is highly participatory (producing original content), 9% participates some of the time (usually curating content – taking an action with the content from the 1% such as commenting, sharing, reposting etc.) and 90% “lurk and learn” or do not participate (they consume the content, but they don’t take an action with it).
It stands to reason then that the 1% are the most influential people on the web, followed by the 9%. But, what about those that produce original content AND curate? They reach influence at scale.
Some brand publishers are already doing this; I touched briefly on the subject in my post, “The Valuation of Content”. The Huffington Post sets the bar with a mix of original content from its editorial staff, curated content where they write two paragraphs and link to another publisher’s content and content from third party bloggers. But, this alone, isn’t enough. They have treated content as a platform, using a social layer to encourage their audience to participate.
Optimization for Participation
One quick look at The Huffington Post homepage, and you can see they’re serving up, not just the latest content, but the most popular, the most discussed, “Hot on Facebook” and “Hot on Twitter”. Dive into an article, and you’ll find it’s easy to comment on posts and share the content through social media.
What does this mean? The Huffington Post are experts at getting their audience to participate, and effectively making content go viral. Their content gets engaged with, curated and broadly syndicated by its own audience because The Huffington Post makes it easy for their audience to find great content and engage/curate/syndicate.
How Can Brands Build a Content Platform?
Ten Tips for Building a Content Platform
- Don’t be a used car salesman (i.e. a good content strategy focuses on building a relationship and trust with the audience)
- Identify what kind of content your target audience finds valuable
- Is there a reoccurring complaint about your product/service? Offer up a piece of content that helps them troubleshoot the problem.
- Are they looking for guidance regarding a topic in which you’re company has domain expertise? Offer up content that can help them (e.g. tips for managing personal finances, a guide to eco-friendly living, considerations when selecting a safe car for your teenager, etc.).
- In what format do they like to consume that content (e.g. video, text, photos, slide presentations)?
- Where do they like to consume that content (e.g. YouTube, blogs, Instagram, Slideshare, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.)?
- Select a product/platform on which to build your hub (WordPress, Facebook, Google)
- Add a social layer (commenting and sharing functionality), if it doesn’t already exist. A great tool to incorporate here is Disqus, which is a comments community, serving as the comments engine for over 1MM sites and has almost 60MM users.
- Produce original content that meets your audience’s needs.
- Curate content that adds value to your original content and to your audience
- Engage with your audience, as they comment and share on your content
- Listen and improve
The image below represents the type and amount of content you should produce against the 90-9-1 rule. In the end, you want to product content that instigates your audience to take an action, including creating more content for you. As a brand, you likely won’t be able to produce enough good content yourself, in-house. And, it’s not your job to either. But, if you use content as a platform for your advocates to create more content about your brand, then you’re reaching scale both in volume of content and syndication of your content.
Related articles
- AOL Buys The Huffington Post (sixestate.com)
- Content As A Platform (reciprocitytheory.com)
- A Case for Social TV (reciprocitytheory.com)
- Unpaid Bloggers Uprising: The AOL / Huffington Post Lawsuit (sixestate.com)
- The Valuation of Content (reciprocitytheory.com)
- Top Eight Reasons B2B Marketers Use Content Curation (e1evation.com)
- 3 Ways Content “Curation” Can Boost Content “Creation” (logicamp.wordpress.com)
- Top Eight Reasons B2B Marketers Use Content Curation (mktg2bizexecs.wordpress.com)
- A Marketer’s Guide to Content Curation (hubspot.com)
The Valuation of Content
The valuation of content is a subject that has been at the forefront of my mind lately.
In the movie business, we used to anticipate the value of content (movies) we were interested in financing and producing by looking at “comps” (or comparables). These were movies of the same genre and budget range as the movie we were considering financing that were released in the previous ten years. We averaged out their budgets, domestic and international box office revenue, and TV syndication revenues in order to determine the potential value of that movie throughout a twenty-year life cycle. This also helped us determine the value of our fund’s movie library and, ultimately, the value of the company.
TV networks and publishers, I imagine, have similar modeling systems but that include assumptions for subscriptions and advertising revenue. I also imagine that the more content that that a company produces, the more difficult it is to valuate the individual piece of content vs. a library of content. For example, how difficult would it be for The New York Times to valuate a single article when it’s churning out tons of content every day. Context also matters. For example: news is real-time, so how valuable is news content a week, a day, even an hour after the news has broken?
Add the commoditization of content – spear-headed by low production costs, and the democratization of distribution (anyone can now produce and distribute content through today’s social web) and the rise of aggregation (publisher’s like The Huffington Post and Business Insider often offer two paragraphs and a link referring to another publisher’s content as a piece of new content) – and we now produce as much information/content in two days as was produced from the dawn of civilization through 2003.
How can we update the revenue model, so that today’s publishers and brands can appropriately price content? The answer, I imagine, will be through social curation. I’m going to investigate this further.
