Twitter is designed for connecting with people and sharing information. While most companies are still debating if they should do it or what they should be saying on Twitter; others are actively involved with the Twitter’s community. Being on Twitter enables the brand who listens and acts quickly to benefit from opportunities, to test on a small scale concepts or promotions, to pinpoint what people really care about and even, to tailor to a new niche.

For those and many more reasons, I believe that a consumer brand who assigns one or two individuals to cover their social media on a full time basis can accomplish a lot to raise the profile of their brand. If small businesses can find the time to be on Twitter, I see no excuse for larger brands to not find a way to finance it.

What about ROI?

Many business people argue about the ROI on being on Twitter. But let’s be honest here. Nobody can really calculate the ROI of a billboard on the highways. Still, brands buy them years after years at a premium price. Why not reallocate the money  of two billboard ad placements to social media for a year and then, see if how it impacts your brand’s reputation, your press coverage, your social media exposure, and yes, sales.

Brands who do it right

See how these companies in the hospitality embrace Twitter. They take initiatives. And some of the things they do are pretty cool! Look at what Roger Smith Hotel, an independent hotel in New York City, has accomplished. I read on Happy Hotelier that Chris Brogan talked on a 10-minute keynote speech he gave at Web 2.0 conference about how his affluent friends on Twitter suggested the Roger Smith Hotel when he asked for where to stay in New York City. Plus, you can hear his recommendation on a video (the Roger Smith Hotel story starts at about 2:22 minutes) on his blog and on You Tube. I could continue but Mashable wrote a convincing post about How Hospitality Companies are Using Social Media for Real Results. Go read it!

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WebTweet is a parallel conference to the 8th edition of WebCom Montreal. Both events will be held on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 at the ICAO head office in Montreal. Last year, I was an official blogger for WebCom. This time, I am glad to participate as a panelist on a subject that is dear to my heart: Twitter for Women (Twitter au féminin). Note that the panel will be in French.

Reporter, blogger and animator Dominic Arpin will be our moderator. The panel is composed by Émilie Ogez, Tamy Emma Pepin, Kim Vallée , Cindy Laverdière. I hope to see you at 1:30 P.M. in room E04.

Other topics covered at webTweet will be Twitter & Politics, Twitter & Business, Twitter, nanolitterature & Cultural Institutions and finally, Twitter & Medias. Plus, the keynote speaker is Jeff Pulver who created the 140 Characters Conferences. It costs $95 to attend webTweet, which includes one meal and the closing cocktail. If you register to WebCom you have access to everything, including the webTweet.

+ WebCom Montreal

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Over the last 9 months in the United States, the percentage of Twitter users doubled in every age group except the 25-34 group. Therefore, the media age of a Twitter user remains stable at 31 years old.

The Pew Internet Project’s September 2009 survey data shows that internet users who use social network sites are more likely to use Twitter or another status updating service. The more devices you own, the more likely you are to tweet.

More Interesting Data

More women (21%) than men (17%) tweet in the United States. Overall 19% of American adults tweet. One fact is is interesting is that household income is not a factor. You get 20-22% of participation in every income bracket.

+ Pew Internet Project’s September 2009 survey report

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Talking about social media feels so apropos since social media was central to my husband’s birthday party. Yahoo has its Big Idea chair photo shoot. We hosted our Favorite Social Media Couch photo booth. The concept was to hold the pillow(s) of the social media that is more important for us between Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

No need to say that I am a part of the social media revolution. If you read this post, you probably are. Social media is not a fad. I recalled last January when we traveled to the United States and my husband told me to turn down the data roaming on your iPhone. What!!! A week without Twitter and my RSS reader on the go. Luckily for me, Rogers added a US data roaming plan the week before so I was able to tweet after all.

We stay connected and share photos with our friends through Facebook and Twitter. You probably noticed that you use less the phone. It is more efficient to send a tweet or a text message. Social media has changed the way we communicate. And I feel it is for the good. And due to social media, I met online and offline new like-minded people; some of which have become good friends.

I want to know which is your favorite social media site or tool?

Social Media Revolution Statistics

If you need data to convince the unconverted ones, look at this video. It highlights key statistics about the growth and the impacts of social media in our everyday life. No need to write them down, Geek in Disguise did it for us.

Thanks to Liberty Post for reminding me about this video this morning. Thanks to Pierre Bellerose for noticing Craftsquatch, the seller of the pillows on etsy and for initiating the photo session. Vive the Social Media Revolution!

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It is not really a surprising news if you ask me. First of all, I told you about the female Internet in autumn 2008. At the time, I reported that Women’s community was the most visited and fastest growing Internet category, tied with politics according to ComScore Media Metrix’s year-end report.

I attributed these statistics to the fact that women are the ones who typically lead conversations, share information amongst themselves and create relationships with their peers. This is basically what social media is all about. What surprised me is what age groups haves the most users. As you can see, it is either 35 to 44 years old or 45 to 55 years old.

I added the more popular age group on the graph produced by Information is Beautiful. The data were compiled by Brian Solis.

+ via a tweet by Miss Rogue

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The New Times published an article today about the fact that party hosts and some bars are starting to request no twittering, no blogging, and no photos. I agree with their concerns.

With the capability of uploading our pictures, updating our status and to publish all the time on social network sites, we need to use judgment about what is appropriate to put online or not. As adults, we must consider others’ view on privacy; not just our own.

I love and live in social media. But I also believe that we must keep a line between our private life and our public life. It is not just for you that you must censor what you put online; it is mostly for my friends and family. Not everyone wishes to participate in social networks.

Different Events, Different Venues, Different Rules

This is a lot to take into consideration. The proper code of etiquette is still in the making. Obeying a few basic rules keeps it simple.

Social media conferences encourage video recordings of the entire session, blogging and twittering. It is a given that you can publish your content without asking. But what about when you are in a restaurant, in a bar or when you are invited at a party at a friend’s house?

It is rare to get great shots in a dark bar with a phone camera. Asking your friends if they are OK with you posting the pictures with your phone in the middle of the party is not enough. Your friends may regret it the next morning. It may just be because they may not like the idea that we see them in a bar drinking and dancing. How many of you, have friends requesting that you untag them?

When you go to a party, upload the pictures the next day. You can better judge sitting at home than in the middle of a party. My rule of thumb is to take pictures at the start of the party. Then, forget about your camera.

Family affairs and parties at a friend’s house is generally off-limits. Even a quiet brunch party can be a problem. First, the host may not want to show off their house publicly. I always keep these pictures off the grid. The same is true for a wedding or a birthday celebration, even if they are happening on a public space.

As we continue to use social network sites, the etiquette will mature, will become more universal and will evolve with what we, as a society, feel comfortable with.

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Many people use Twitter to meet their friends at restaurants, shops, museums and other public places. Launched last week by Praized, TwitArea enables to quickly lead them to a place’s address, phone number and locate the place on a map. If you have a smart phone, you will find that having a direct link on tweets saves you time while you are on the run.

Another good use is to clearly identify a place. A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted about a hotel in Toronto. But the Toronto hotel has almost the same name as a trademark hotel in Chicago. Linking to the place on my tweet would have avoided the confusion.

How to Use TwitArea

No need to register. All you need to post a tweet with TwitArea is to use Firefox and be on the Twitter.com site. Simply install the Firefox add-on for TwitArea. The Firefox add-on will add an Insert Place button under the text box on Twitter.com. Click on the button whenever you wish to add the information of a place. Find the place you are referring to and click on the Tweet this! button. Voilà!

Your tweet will look like this. Anyone on a computer or using a smart phone will be able to click on the short URL to know the address, phone and locate on a map the place. I like it because TwitArea simplifies my life.

About Praized Media, the maker of TwitArea

TwitArea is related to Praized community database containing the location of 16 million businesses in Canada and in the United States. The Praized application is what is powering my Places community on At Home with Kim Vallee. Located in Montreal, Praized enables publishers with an easy way for their readers to recommend local businesses to each other.

+ TwitArea

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Social media is not only for people. It provides great opportunities for businesses, when done right. Social media allows any business to engage, listen, share and exchange ideas with consumers like you never been able to do it before. Plus, I feel that you can discover way more than with traditional communications and running controlled focus groups. You will discover the truth about what people feels and thinks.

One friend who shares my passion for social media in the business is Lara McCulloch, Marketing Director at Regal Tent Productions Ltd. I met her last year while blogging. We had dinner together last winter after the IDS 09 in Toronto.

Lara produced a blog called Ready 2 Spark but she is also a change agent in her industry. Lara organizes Twitter chat events twice a week where event professionals discuss matters affecting their industry. Her #eventprofs Twitter chat have been noticed by Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media and will be included as a good practice in the The Twitter Book.

I am telling you all this because Lara wrote an article for Special Events Magazine last month about the need for change in business marketing and communications. She made a good argument on why business must adapt and take advantage of the possibility that social media offers to them. She addressed some of the most common fear by management.

MORE:
+ The World is Changing … Why Aren’t You? in Special Events Magazine

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San Francisco is known as a city with a diverse pool of Web 2.0 professionals. So maybe it is not surprising that the City of San Francisco launched a Twitter application where anyone can send direct messages (DM) to report a problem or send a request to the city’s customer service hotline.

Twitter became one more point of contact with the 311 Customer Service Center. View “Sample Tweets” of their most requested services to help ensure you provide the information needed to properly service your request. 311 can help with:

• Street Cleaning
• Graffiti Removal
• Pothole and Sidewalk Defects
• Abandoned Vehicles
• City Garbage Can Maintenance
• Department Information (office hours, location, phone numbers)
• … and much more!

Added Value of Attaching Pictures to Your Requests

Like any direct message that you send on Twitter, you can attach a picture. This is an added value of the Twitter reporting.  Seeing the pictures help the City gives a round estimate of the problem. With that added information, the City could better and faster prioritize every request.

If you are not on twitter, know that San Francisco residents, businesses or tourists wishing to get non-emergency information or request services pertaining to San Francisco government may call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year by dialing 311 and talk to a real person.

+ Via RT @jeromeparadis : RT @mathewi : @craignewmark

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But as many other bloggers, I often wish to mix and match plugins in a different way. This is where I hit a wall. I hit a few walls so far. Some are due to the fact that I run a design blog where the visual aspect is quite important. At other times, I wish to bring a feature to the next level.

Mashup Sites

Today’s blogs are mashups. WordPress blogs are the king of mashups. Plugins are developed by a bunch of programmers of different skill levels. The ideal plugin gives control to the user with parameters. One size fits all does not work to bring the ultimate experience to your community.

To understand my point, let’s look at the mashup of P2 theme with Twitter Tools. Two teams developed the 2 projects. I decided to put them together to create my Live blog. I used these 2 tools as an example but the same hold true for most Web 2.0 tools that you put together.

The Situation

Like I mentioned yesterday on my At Home blog, I created Kim Vallee Live to publish quick posts, without photos and to live blog when I go to conferences. The P2 theme interface provides a Twitter-style interface without limiting my comment to 140 characters, which provides the right framework for what I want.

One feature of the Twitter Tools plugin is to automatically publish a tweet by shortening the message I entered in Kim Vallee Live. But the way it is done right now does not add value to my readers. See for yourself, why I do not like the current result:

Twitter Tools automatically adds “New blog post:” in front of the tweet. Even if technically, each entry I published in P2 is a post, there are not from a user viewpoint. My programmer changed the plugin to put #kvlive instead. If the maker of Twitter Tools had better thought about usability, they could have add one more parameter to their long list of options so I can fill the text of the prefix. If I do not wish to add a prefix, I would leave blank the text box.

The other problem is that the tweet message is too short to be meaningful for my followers. What happened is that the Twitter Tools plugin used the post title as the content for the tweet. The P2 theme stored the first 40 characters as the post title. The maker of the P2 theme did not anticipated that it could be a problem since this WordPress theme was designed to show Twitter-style posts.

One lesson I learned from years of experience in software development is that users will always find new ways to use your applications. As more and more non-technical people are embracing social media and running different types of blogs, it puts more pressure on developers of mashup tools to give more control to the users.

Custom-Made Solution

I defined with Jerome of Paradivision (we own Paradivision) the ultimate automatic tweet generator for Kim Vallee Live. We still have to implement it. Until then, I disabled the automatic tweet feature. When it is done, Jerome and I will share with you what we did.

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I was one of the 5 official bloggers at 6th WebCom edition, an International Web 2.0 conference which happened May 13, 2009 in Montreal. Liveblogging is not an easy task. I was wondering how I could manage it. I thought microblogging will simplify the reporting of the sessions. This is how the P2 theme for WordPress made my dreams come true.

What makes P2 different than a typical Blog Theme?

My technical support staff quickly installed the P2 theme under At Home with Kim Vallee. The P2 theme acts like the Twitter interface without the 140 character limit. My Tweets are also aggregated in P2 because we installed the Twitter tools plugin.

Everything can done from the main page of your blog. Once logged in, the blog author can publish new posts directly from the home page of the live blog. The readers can also comment directly from the home page. This advanced programming theme does not reload the entire Web page as you enter new information. Thus, it is quicker for you and your readers.

Keyboard shortcuts enables you to speed thing up when live blogging.

We still need to brand the theme to my overall blog theme and to integrate it into the navigation. This will be done in the coming weeks as our agenda is full right now.

What is the use of P2 Theme for a regular blogger?

Besides covering events, P2 can enhance the curated experience you provide to your readers. Using my iPhone, I plan to provide my readers with pertinent information as I encounter it on my daily basis. Things, like quick links, that my readers will like to know but that are not enough to write a full post are the type of content that I expect. This will not replace my regular blog; it will complement it. Since it is a new concept, the way I use it will evolve with time.

Why can I do all that with Twitter? First because P2 is not limited to 140 characters. Second, because my Twitter followers are not necessarily my blog readers. Third, I aggregate the conversations on my property while I still participate in the must-be social networks (Twitter and Facebook).

Disclaimer: My husband is the founding president of Paradivision and I own shares.

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One presenter was Felipe Coimbra of Twtapps. I first met Felipe at a Tweetup last March (see picture at the end of the post). Felipe developed simple yet very practical Twitter-based applications. One great feature is that you do not need to register to use his free applications. For a fee, Twtapps can brand their applications to your blog or company. He is also thinking about adding premium services.

The current free version is plenty to fill many blogger’s needs. I wish to put the attention on three popular applications.

TwtPoll let you run simple poll online. This is a very popular Twitter application. It was the 9th most popular Twitter applications according to Compete (February 2009). This assessment was based on monthly active users.

TwtInvite is the most used applications to organize Tweetup events. It would be perfect to plan informal picnics in the park. A quick way to reach the Twitter community for your event. You simply fill a form and voilà. People can respond to the invite. This enables you to track the number of attendees and see who plan to be there. The event can be public or private.

TwtQpon is a simple way for small business owners and etsy sellers to promote rebate to the Twitter community.

Major brands use TwtQpon and TwtPoll. Several Twtapps applications were featured in TechCrunch. Plus Felipe is a nice guy. You should give his applications a try.

+ Twtapps

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