I saw a tweet the other day by a self-proclaimed social media ‘expert,’ they seem to be everywhere these days, saying everyone blogs to showcase their expertise in an area - wrong. Well at least for me, I’m blogging to learn. One prime example is what I learned through my recent FourSquare post.
Originally I set out to post about my thought, FourSquare is a cool idea but would only work if enough people outside of the tech and marketing industries caught on. It then evolved into asking why it was continuously compared to Twitter. I concluded FourSquare would not reach the popularity Twitter was able to achieve. As an afterthought, I see predications meant FourSquare will be the most popular social media tool of 2010, not explicitly reaching the height of popularity of Twitter. Either way, I knew I was refuting Robert Scoble and Mashable and still assume I will be eating my words.
Blogging is an outlet I use to explore social media, the impact new technology could have on clients and consumers or something as basic as how to use it. I also blog about my career ambitions and how I plan to meet them or useful tips on how I did that other aspiring marketing professionals might find useful. At the end of the day, it’s about staying on top of industry trends and getting ahead of the competition - not blogging to be an expert.
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Twitter enables a new form of engagement in real time at a moderately low cost. Companies were quick to tap into the Twitter hype and have used a variety methods to integrate Twitter into their business model. Whole Foods and Starbucks are two of the most notable brands paving the way for corporate Twitter accounts. Social Media Specialist Winnie Hsia from Whole Foods and Brad Nelson the voice behind Starbucks discussed their corporate Twitter strategies during the ‘Growing your brand on Twitter’ panel. Whole Foods is in the process of rolling out Twitter accounts for all 275 locations. In terms of branding both panelists agreed, to my surprise, it was better to have a logo for the Twitter avatar than the individual’s picture as long as you included their name in the bio. This allows companies to better brand the Twitter account while still being authentic. Starbucks only has one account and they have hired on Brad Nelson as the fulltime Twitter account manager. As Starbucks receives hundreds of tweets a day he can’t respond to all of them but makes sure to respond to every question and complaint.
