DC Interactive Group’s SmartMarketing Blog

The Twittervese has been all, well, atwitter, with news about Twitter’s new Lists feature. As someone who manages an ever-growing Twitter account with thousands of followers, I was pretty excited when I first heard about this. Lists promised to help me organize my followers — much like I already do on Tweetdeck Groups — but now publicly so I can share the people I love to follow with the world. But lets be honest. It’s less about Listing people you follow. The real bragging rights come from being Listed on other’s lists, thus presumably upping your company’s percieved value on Twitter.

Twitter’s Lists are kind of a more advanced, permanant, and more lastingly socially sharable version of #followfriday. For those of you who don’t know, #followfriday is a hashtag that people use to recommend followers to others on, of course, Friday. But as someone who thinks the worst place to use Twitter is on Twitter.com I find the creation of lists there to be something only one with limitless time could persue. Who has limitless time to create lists on Twitter? Well the most likely group would probably be the throngs of “social media experts” who clutter up their streams with tips they schedule to Tweet out throughout the day. In my own little lab experiment, it took approximately 5-6 seconds to add each user to a List. That translates into something very impractical and ultimately a poor measurement of your reach and influence.

Regular users, meaning your real customers and potential customers, are highly unlikely to create Lists. The average Twitter user may want to read your Tweets, click on your links and be influenced by your brand but probably doesn’t have time to categorize you into a List. Would they even know they can create Lists? Could they even do it from the application or mobile device they use to Tweet? It comes down to this: as far as the average Twitter is concerned, you’re either followed or not followed, you’re either on or off. It would be akin to requiring a magazine reader to clip out your ad and pin it to a wall to prove they really like you. That’s just silly.

Chances are TweetDeck and other applications will add the ability to allow users to create and manage Lists. That may make it easier for power Twitter users like myself, but not for the average joe. Alas, it was a good idea. In theory.

My dad told me to never argue with a person who buys ink by the barrel. I finally listened.

Today I tell my kids not to aggravate anyone with a computer who is well versed in social media — especially if that person is a mac fan.

Mac people are part of a cult-ure (yes, that spelling is intentional). They believe in the company and the products, and they’re fiercely protective of all things mac. So it should not surprise anyone that as soon as Motorola came out with their Droid TV spots that focused on what they thought were the iPhone’s weaknesses, mac fanatics would respond — and the response would go viral.

Here’s the iDon’t TV spot from Motorola for their Droid phone due out in November, 09 and then below that is a couple of responses from the mac world. Note that I wrote the Droid won’t be out until November — that means these iPhone fans have mounted a response without ever even getting their hands on the Droid.

At least now they aren’t wasting a lot of ink fighting. Just bandwidth.

Last week, Yoono (the browser sidebar/desktop add-on that allows you to connect your social networking and instant messaging profiles all in one place) reached 3 million downloads. That’s a gigantic number, but it also says there are plenty of us out there who aren’t using it yet.

For those of us constantly monitoring social networking and instant messaging platforms, Yoono is an incredible time-saver. Not only does it monitor your friends and the people you’re following, but it allows you to update your status in bulk or on individual profiles.

Personally, I just have Yoono synced up with my Facebook and Twitter accounts, and I leave my chat client to handle things like AIM and Google Talk. Yoono streams updates into your Firefox/IE sidebar, leaving you free to do other things. You don’t need to check your profiles constantly to see if anyone recently posted some interesting or relevant content.

It’s also great for monitoring multiple accounts to make sure the tweets and updates you send out are typo-free and have a working link in them. If there happens to be a mistake, it’s an easy remedy with the streaming sidebar.

Click here to check Yoono out for yourself. As I stated earlier, it’s available as a browser add-on or a desktop application. I highly recommend getting your hands on the browser add-on. You’ll be amazed by how much time you save.

You likely are well aware of my company’s Social Media Marketing Program that we named “Sparking”.  You can learn about it by clicking here.  While this program successfully and cost effectively increases our clients’ followers, friends and fans through a wide mixture of social media and Web 2.0 tools, our biggest goal through Sparking is to grow our clients’ e-lists.

At a recent conference, I sat on a panel with three social media “experts” who said that our focus was a waste because people didn’t use email anymore.  I was stunned — not because these “experts” had a different opinion, but because they were so anti-email.

When I pointed out to that everyone on the panel communicated with each other before the conference via email, and that eblasts were the number one way people at the conference linked to the registration page, they were silent.

It seems to me that social media experts like their tools so much that it has had a negative effect on their abilities to generate sales and exposure for their clients.  Each one of the panelists was an expert on one social media tool (Facebook, YouTube and Twitter), which is likely why each one professed that their tool of choice was all that was needed.

Well, what’s needed is results.  And short of online sales, the best way to measure results is to track the response from those who follow you by analyzing eblast clickthroughs and reads.  Email works in tandem with other tactics to increase engagement, deliver relevant content and build contact databases.

And don’t believe these people when they say email is dead.  While Twitter and Facebook certainly offer other ways for people to communicate, the simple truth is that most adults (young and old) have an email account and check it often.  Heck, some have more than one.

Here’s a chart just released from MarketingSherpa that dispels the myth that email is dead.  Note that this chart is about how consumers share information about a product or service they find interesting:

According to MarketingSherpa, the chart views “how email is used to share information, because this activity is so central to social media sites. Email is dominant, even in this regard.  When we look at media use over the last 15 years, we see a pattern of aggregation and adoption rather than replacement. Some media suffer in the exchange, but none are eliminated entirely. More commonly, their uses become more refined.  For example, we may find that Twitter and Facebook gradually reduce our use of email to convey quick messages and content to social groups, but it’s far less likely that social media will replace email for commercial transactions, receipts and the like.”

In conclusion, email is not dying.  It’s not even sick.  It’s still the number one way that people share important information.  And, to boot, it’s the only clear way you can monitor what your friends, fans and followers do with the information you give them.

Yes, you read that headline correctly.  Fascinating isn’t it how social media and the interactive web world has been extended to allow average Joes the opportunity to contribute to a rock star’s body of work?  The Public Record invites users to collaborate with Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee on his new album by submitting vocal and drum tracks to songs on which he is working.

The downside?  All submissions become the property of Mötley Crüe, so say goodbye to the dream of making a fortune in royalties.

“If Led Zeppelin had done this, I’d have sent them my drum parts for sure,” said Lee in an interview printed on money.cnn.com.

I cannot stress enough that this interactivity is exactly where the internet is heading.  As time passes, we’re going to see more and more applications like this for everything from song writing to problem solving.  And it makes perfect sense — why tackle complicated things yourself when you can put a direction out there and ask others to help get you where you want to go?

When it comes to social media, we must continue to think about ways to involve our fan base in the discussions:  ask their opinions for decorating a new facility.  Open your blogs to product and service reviews.  Query your followers for new ideas.

Really, social media is about discussing what you’re doing with your market and learning from them how you can get better.

In the end, you, your followers and your company will be much better off.

I can only hope that Tommy Lee uses good judgment when it comes to picking the best fan submissions for his new album.