Tag: Twitter

Twitter Study Statistical and Social Results

NOTE: This is a follow up to my previous “ Twitter Usage Study“. Please Tweet This!

I want to start by saying that I am NOT a Twitter Expert. I think it is pretty early to give clear definition to what a “Twitter expert” really is. There are some Twitter users whom I would consider highly effective at propagating a message, but even many of the best will disclaim that extremely overused claim to being an expert. The fact is that those who are good at Twitter are good at people.

My Twitter Experience

This is a summary of my past ten days as a Twitter newbie. I have learned a lot in this time, and I found interesting results of my Twitter study. First, I will start with what matters, and then get to the numbers.

I used Twitter for three other projects I worked on in 2008, but I did not make a big effort to optimize my use. Only when I recently embraced Twitter as the vital social networking tool it represents, did I see the big picture. In this short time, I have made many observations and met a few people who really influenced me.

Twitter Study: The People Matters

I explained the importance of social networking relationships in my recent article “Three Kids Prove Social Networking Works“. The article tells how I met close friends online over a decade ago, including my closest friend and wife, Peggy in 2000. Nobody can tell me that the relationships are just a side-effect … they are what counts.

Each day I use Twitter, I notice that there are a few people I look forward to reading about and having a quick chat with. I will just name a few, but there are many more whom I enjoy and respect. If you follow my tweets, or look at my favorites you can start to see the people I respect and visit with the most. Some of the outstanding people I have had the privilege to chat with one-on-one and grow my respect for are as follows:  

Jim Connolly (@jimconnolly): I have gained a lot of respect for Jim, and I suggest everybody read his brilliantly authored “Top 10 Tips” and his story “Twitter and me” about deleting his group of over 20,000 followers to do things right the second time. Many people would consider Jim a Twitter expert.

Reg Saddler (@zaibatsu): Reg called me just after midnight and we talked for over two hours. I wrote about it in my article “Social Networking: A Call from Reg Saddler (zaibatsu)“. I have learned a lot from Reg, and he is a top-notch Twitter user with over 34,000 followers.

Jimmy Vee (@5ftHighMktgGuy): Jimmy has a certain familiar swagger that I respect. After reading about his business, “Gravitational Marketing: The Science of Attracting Customers“, watching his video, and reciprocal tweeting, I have come to like his style.

Joe Scanlon (@littlequiz): Joe is an Irish Blog Awards finalist, and I am excited for him at this recent achievement! Joe is a delight to visit with during the very late night or early morning hours (my time). He “gets it”!

Mari Smith (@marismith): Mari is a delight, and a very insightful lady. She is a joy in every communication. The author of “Why Facebook?: Social Networking for Fun and Profits!“, Mari understands that the people come first, and has many valuable lessons to share.

 

I would recommend following each of these people and learn from them, just as I have. They are each fine examples of the real people you can meet with Twitter.

I was on the telephone with a friend who asked me for a one sentence description of Twitter. I tweeted his question for others to address and then answered him “It is a great way to meet interesting people and gather useful information”. I very quickly received an answer back on Twitter that was almost identical to mine. This is the mindset that will work best, and people can identify with.

Twitter Disasters

If you are using Twitter for the wrong reasons, you may find yourself very frustrated. It is fine to join the community and align yourself with others where there is a potential mutual benefit. However, it is best to leave self-interest at the door and focus on being friendly and helpful. If your motivation is wrong, you may find this impossible.

Like every social media, there will be those who do the cyber equivalent of walking into a party and try to hand everybody their business card. People don’t have time or patience for that on Twitter … or the Internet for that matter. If you think that millions of people will congregate online with the purpose of being hit up with your pitch, you may do well to get a job at a carnival. People do not enjoy being sold at. Twitter is a conversation and not your personal billboard or bull horn.

I have noticed that there is an abundance of people trying to sell their services and products, while there are relatively few who are actually achieving it abundantly. What the Twitter achievers know is that the people are what matter, as I explained above.

What Gets Under Our Skin? My Observations:

  • Auto DM – Many people abhor the automated direct message they get when they begin to follow you. If they thought you were interesting, a lot of that goes out the window when they get a message like I received. It read as follows: “blah blah blah … buy my stuff and visit my website”. OK, that is not verbatim, but that is as close as I remembered it. No, I didn’t visit your “Magnificent Wonder-Widget” Website. I want to learn about you in time … don’t cram it down my throat like the guy at the carwash trying to sell me the extra greasy crap for the tires.
  • Link Guesswork – If others are to trust your taste and click on the link you sent, it had better not be misrepresented. When you provide a link, it is respectful to others and will be much better received if you give an accurate and concise description of what to expect.
  • Same Old Stuff – If we look at your profile and see that it shows a history of the same old thing just repeated in different ways, you strike out. You are a person, so behave that way. We are not looking for a machine to hand out lines of drivol … we want to know you. Show your personality! We may not all like you, but some of us surely will.

Twitter Study Statistics

I said I would share this with you, so here are some of the numbers. As it says in my initial “Twitter Usage Study“, I started the study with a relatively unused Twitter account (@murnahan) that had only 78 followers. Here are the present numbers at publish of this article:

  • 783 Followers
  • 97.4 Percentile Re-tweet
  • 100+ Cities (first 2 days)
  • 19 Native Languages
  • 482 Unique Referrals from Twitter.com to awebguy.com/ptt
  • 33 Countries
    • 1. United States
    • 2. United Kingdom
    • 3. Canada
    • 4. India
    • 5. Germany
    • 6. Australia
    • 7. Austria
    • 8. United Arab Emirates
    • 9. New Zealand
    • 10. Switzerland
    • 11. France
    • 12. Denmark
    • 13. Belgium
    • 14. Sweden
    • 15. Pakistan
    • 16. South Africa
    • 17. Russia
    • 18. Costa Rica
    • 19. Philippines
    • 20. Netherlands
    • 21. Turkey
    • 22. Indonesia
    • 23. Mexico
    • 24. Brazil
    • 25. Hong Kong
    • 26. Ukraine
    • 27. Rwanda
    • 28. Taiwan
    • 29. Italy
    • 30. Slovenia
    • 31. Spain
    • 32. Malaysia
    • 33. Montenegro

In the past ten days, the followers multiplied by ten. As I write this, I have 783 followers. You may see a chart of growth at twittercounter.com/murnahan. I also now show a 97.4 percentile re-tweet rate according to retweetrank.com/murnahan.

I launched the study on Saturday 7 February, and I knew it would perform weak for a couple days. The study ultimately did not have an overwhelming re-tweet rate, and now I know why, but it was picked up by some of the Twitter elite and sent to their followers. I believe the reason it did not travel as much as hoped is because Twitter users are absolutely sick to death of somebody trying to sell them on a new way to “be successful on Twitter”. I suspect that the description may have been viewed that way in tweets, but it simply is not the case. The hashtag #PTT made it around the world reasonably well, but it did not drive overwhelming Web traffic (under 500 referred from the passing of the tweet). This does not mean it was not heard, it just means that a lot of the message stayed within the confines of Twitter.

In the proper spirit of Twittering, I provide this to you in hopes that you find it interesting and useful. I would also like to offer these links that I found profoundly interesting. Please Tweet!

From Brooks Bayne: “The Newest Way To Game Twitter – Fake Followers” (tweet it!)
From Pete Cashmore: “The Science of ReTweets” (tweet it!)

Social Networking: A Call from Reg Saddler (zaibatsu)

We are all people … we have emotions, motivations, body odors, and a history. Some of us are funny, some of us are deep thinkers, and some of us just want to have fun. The bottom line is that when you peel back the layers, none of us are really corporate drones, regardless how the workday may sometimes feel. Making it personal is what matters.

Reg Saddler (@zaibatsu) Conversation

I had the pleasure early this morning (just after midnight) of receiving a telephone call from Reg Saddler(@zaibatsu). We talked for over two hours. I was very honored to speak with Reg, as he is a true master in the marketing industry. In our talks, a lot was more about fun stuff, like a plan to entertain you all with a road rally Webcast (as I did with CopMagnet.com). One thing that really sticks out is that Reg said “Most people do not even know what I do for a living.” Coming from a true Internet marketing master, this emphasizes this message that “I”, “me”, and “my” are not what drives success. Now I want to speak favorably about Reg Saddler as a person, and if that is not how to reach people, I do not know what is.

I, Me and My Don’t Belong in Social Networks

Now that companies have made their peace with their best assets, the people, they encourage their employees to use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and all of the latest social networking tools. The hardships lie in their use, and a lack of understanding that promoting an agenda is not a suitable part of social media / social networking. I have heard it described as shouting out your sales pitch at a cocktail party. That is not an image of success, and it will not create success.

These are just my thoughts … and I am just one guy. But when it comes to social networking, the agenda of serving yourself only magnifies a disturbance that likely exists in other aspects of ones life. If you live your life bugging people to hear all about “I”, “me”, and “my”, you may be well reminded of why you have two ears and only one mouth.

Why Social Networking Started: In Summary

Let’s look at why social networking became commercialized. For a time, the Internet seemed very impersonal. It was like a contest to see which corporation could have the fanciest Website with the most views. The public went with that for a while, but it eventually only emphasized the absurd big bucks corporate mentality bred in the 1990s. You may remember the visions of the Silicon Valley executive taking his pick of ladies in line at the hottest nightclub after driving up in a Ferrari. It was like a Hollywood red carpet frenzy. The image of a company was more important than the real assets … the individuals. The passion to create a big corporate image was worthy of ridicule, just as much as the buzzards on Wall Street are in 2009. Fortunately, the culture has changed, and we see the errors of those ways.

As the Internet matured, and as people became tired of clicking around for precious minutes just to find a phone number to call the huge dot com, then wade through “press 7 to hold” hell, and finally reach a corporate drone, companies somehow found a better resource in the uniqueness of each of us as individuals. It finally made sense to personalize the Internet and quit trying to imply that computers could replace real people.

Related Article: Three Kids Prove Social Networking Works
Related Article: Twitter Usage Study: Pass the Tweet #PTT

Three Kids Prove Social Networking Works

Social networking has been analyzed, scrutinized, bastardized, and commercialized, but my family is proof that it works, and that it has worked for over a decade. If you will give me a moment, I will tell you why I am blogging about this today, and give inspirational credit to people I met and have built deep relationships with that have lasted for over a decade and growing, and those whom I only recently met. I will start with today, and I will go back to the really good stuff when I met Peggy.

My Social Networking Proof 

A little while ago, I sent a tweet on Twitter (for the confused, see: “Twitter Usage Study: Pass The Tweet #PTT“) and it read as follows:

“Social Networking Fact: I met my wife online in 2000 and we await the birth of our 3rd child in April. It works, I tell ya!”.

I sent this tweet after an engaging blog conversation asking “When will social media be ‘ready’?”. I am never the guy to leave a quick one-liner on a blog because I am just not a link-spammy blogger. I would rather say nothing at all than to say “Great article, it was really helpful.” As it should be, my comment was thoughtful, and it was engaged by the author, Caleb Gardner. Here is how it went:

Mark Aaron Murnahan:

When somebody questions the ROI of social media, they have already missed the point. It is worse than the mentality of trying to measure the ROI on taking a client to a ball game or going to dinner. Building relationships should not be measured by dollars and cents. I have just been communicating with a friend whom I met and have built a strong friendship since 1998. I have never asked her for business or for referrals, but you can bet that if she knows somebody who needs my services, I will get the call. Further, I did a lot of dating online years before it was common and finally met my wife online in 2000. We are now expecting our third child in April 2009. Social networking has been ready for years, but people being ready for it is another story. Social networking used to happen in ballrooms and the corner restaurant. The primary thing that changed was the venue.

calebgardner:

@Mark

I love the personal story about your wife. Way to make an emotional (literally) appeal for social networking.

It’s an interesting thought that social networking has been around for years. You’re right – it literally has in that we’ve always built relationships with those around us. I think what is happening is that the Web is making us more cognizant of the relationships we build, because we’re able to build them with people that we never would have been in contact with before.

Hmm… have to give that some more thought. Sounds like an interesting post on its own… 

Mark Aaron Murnahan:

@caleb

Since my comment, I was on the phone with a good friend I know from my “other job” racing cars. His very financially successful company has a churn issue because of a hugely competitive market with tiny margins. I used myself as an example with him. I explained that he would not hear my message as clearly if he did not know me, my wife, my children, and my integrity. He has been in my garage working on racecars with me at 3:00am before a big event, and we drive around corners at 100+++MPH together, for the sake of Pete. He knows that I have a lot more at stake than a sales pitch. We have a relationship. I have tried to reach his executive staff to understand that without relationships, all we have is a sales pitch, and that people do not buy the pricetag but rather what is attached. He gets the message, and he is really excited to work together, as am I, but he is getting a lot of pushback on implementation from his fellow execs. They have a corporate stuffiness that does not even match their written message and their goals. The bottom line is that if we miss the relationships, we work much harder and achieve less. You built on our relationship by engaging me with your reply. This is how stuff really works. My next blog article about it is forthcoming.

How I Met My Wife: Re-tweeted

Remember that tweet I sent? It was re-tweeted and replied to, which is always an honor, because it means I said something that people actually heard and thought enough about to tell others, and to ask a question. A question was posed by @askorkin as follows:

“really! you met your wife online, i am intrigued how? if you don’t mind my asking :)”

—

I replied:“Since you asked how I met my wife online, I am inspired to blog about it. It is my best proof that social networking really works.”

—

My Social Networking in 1998

In 1998, I had a friend and business partner who did not really understand the reach of the Internet. He was a physician and I was a marketing guy. We were working on a project targeted toward pharmaceutical companies that were spending tons of money to bring doctors to luxury resorts in Miami, Palm Springs, Orlando, Phoenix, and elsewhere, to learn about their new drug. At the time, thanks to government subsidized travel and tourism in Central Europe, we found that it was actually less costly to bring American participants to a conference in Budapest, Hungary than to Miami. This became the target of our new conferencing company.

Jeff posed a lot of questions as to how the Internet worked into our business model. He did not really “get it”. I explained that I had developed a network of friends in the region, and globally. Even back then, my European social network of friends included Bianca, who was an au pair from Austria working in USA, with whom I have communicated even in the last 24 hours (see my Facebook).

We made connections with hotel managers, tourist attractions, and one of our favorites, Varsaci Karoly (“Karchi”). Karchi worked for the E.C. as a Euro Qualifier, and we were fast friends. We got to know him online, but he soon showed us many incredible times in Budapest. We had a lot of fun at the courtesy of the Hungarian government. After all, it was ideal for them to attract American dollars back then.

It was really sinking in for Jeff, by this point, that this Internet thing could be useful. However, he still questioned it as a marketing tool. It is funny how most people think of it as a marketing tool first, and a networking tool second. We (he) flipped that around. Jeff knew that I was pretty “Internet savvy”, but I needed to give him a clear example. This gets to how I met my wife.

Social Networking Study: “Mark the Single Guy”

By 1999, I was single, 26 years old, and retired. My marketing business had been pretty good to me, but my personal life was lackluster from years of focusing on my work. Jeff’s challenge to use the Internet to show localized results led me to kill two birds with one stone. I wanted a woman to hold, and he wanted to understand the Internet. Again, it is funny how he thought localization was the challenge back then, but now globalization is the challenge.

I set out to prove that there were enough people right there in our town of Topeka, Kansas, USA to show the Internet market reach. Of course, back then, his concern was that the audience may be too slim. Wow, I showed him. I used a XOOM.com account (back then xoom.com was a free host) to create a significantly detailed biography of “Mark the Single Guy”, and I used a “.cjb.net” account to shorten the URL. I included everything I liked, didn’t like, and I even had a special section about my baggage. The “Mark’s Baggage” section was complete with an affiliate link to ebags.com. I promoted my heart everywhere I could, and I used the equivalent of today’s “re-tweeting” by asking my online social network to pass along the bio and help me find the woman who would become the love of my life.

It was not too long before I was receiving 300-400 email messages per day from ladies within a 50 mile radius who wanted to meet me. I met a lot of ladies, and I had a lot of fun … yes, a lot! I met a few neurotic ladies like Sara, Nancy, and DeeAnne, and I broke a few hearts. I am still sorry for making one of the Stacys cry. She was a sweet girl, and I really liked her family. Of course, Sara, Nancy, and DeeAnne were the ones I really wanted, but thanks to them, I was single when I met my darling wife, Peggy.

After the neurotic gals had nearly broken my will, I was pretty careful when it came to being close to Peggy. I think I was in love with her before I ever touched her hand or smelled her hair. Peggy was clearly very special, and I would do my best to keep from hurting her with my baggage (and WOW, I had baggage). Peggy does not like to admit this, but she admitted back then to crying as she read the deepest parts of me, the man she really wanted but was afraid of.

Social Networking: Shedding My Skin for Peggy

Sharing the real me was like pulling a scab off my entire body and letting air hit my sensitive inside. In my biography, I had shed my skin and stood emotionally naked for the world to see and inspect. It is lucky for both of us that I was real. I showed my sweat, my tears, my fears, my body odor, and the things that made me a real person.

Is This Fact or Fiction?

Some will question if this is all real, just as Peggy did back then. The accounts you have read here are only a small part of the full story, but it is all real, and it is all me. Perhaps as you get to know me, I will tell you the really deep and hard stuff that I once shared more freely online.

It cannot be all wrong to share who you are. After all, that is how I met the love of my life and the mother of my six year old son, my three year old daughter, and the baby she carries today whom I will announce in April 2009.

If you would like to know me better, just tell me so, and we will make that happen. I know the value of social networking, and I treasure the many relationships I have built.

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