Noah Kravitz is being sued by his former company for his Twitter followers. This is the story:

“A Twitter user is being sued for £217,000 by his former employer for taking his online followers with him when he switched jobs. Noah Kravitz, a writer from Oakland, California, amassed 17,000 followers on the social networking site when he worked for PhoneDog, a website providing news and reviews about mobile phones.”

The conversation on Search Engine – like every conversation on Search Engine – is really worth giving a listen. They talk about the value of a Twitter follower, the pros and cons of adding personality to a feed. How Twitter changes the role of a journalist. These are all questions at the heart of Search Engine – a truly awesome podcast from Ontario.

So what is the value of a Twitter follower? In the suit, PhoneDog wants $2.50 a month for 8 months per Twitter follower. That’s an average, obviously – we all get spammed on a daily basis on our Twitter feed. Clearly those people who follow me just to tell me about their iPads or their nudity aren’t worth $2.50, per month.

Tweeting as a person or a brand

This suit does bring up an interesting question, one that is often asked in social media.  Should a company tweet as the logo, or as a person?

The danger of the latter is obvious: people leave. In the case of Noah and PhoneDog, he left. And he took the followers. But lets pretend that PhoneDog had a policy in place to own the Twitter followers of the employee tweeting on their behalf.

Even if Noah handed back the Twitter feed to PhoneDog, one would assume they would need to replace Noah with someone equally as engaging.

Which brings an obvious paradox. Noah built the twitter following to over 17K followers. Lets say he leaves the company and throws the password on the table as he walks out and abandons the Twitter feed. One would suspect that the person who would replace him would understand how to build a following on Twitter, and thus would have a following on Twitter.

It seems like a wash.

However: if the Twitter feed was always PhoneDog, then when a new person comes in, they can simply pick up where the former employee left off.

Yes, some people will know. I’ve managed branded Twitter feeds before, and got to know people personally through the feed. When I left, they knew the feed changed – mostly because they followed me personally on twitter and knew I had moved on.

My point is this: branded Twitter feeds can still have a personality because there is always a person behind them. I feel like I’m generating a personality for the brand I manage – and this brand doesn’t need my name. My personal Twitter feed can be left with Arsenal moaning, kid updating and Foursquare checking in.

The branded account can stay just that, an account without a name with personality. And they will never have to let the followers go.

So what do you think? Does a Twitter feed have to have a name attached to it? What is the value of a Twitter follower? How about a Facebook fan?

Related articles

• Blogger sued over Twitter followers (technologytell.com)
• Company sues ex-employee for his Twitter followers (guardian.co.uk)
• Who owns the followers when employees leave? (socialmedianz.com)
• Lawsuit Could Put Monetary Value on Twitter Followers (newsy.com)
• Who owns influence? (listencompletely.com)
• Noah Kravitz sued by former bosses for taking Twitter followers with him (dailymail.co.uk)
• Lawsuit Over Twitter Followers of the Day (geeks.thedailywh.at)

Before I talk about this, I should point something out: I happen to think blogs are just a website with a bad name. Is Huffington Post a blog? Is the NY Times a blog? If so, what is the difference between and article and a blog post?

Semantics in a comic

Semantics, in my opinion.

As a long time critic of the classic ‘website’, the place where we post “about us” and “company history” on platforms that need to be updated by programmers, I simply think the unfortunately named “blog” is merely a website that can be updated by people.

I bolded the last bit because that’s the crux of this particular essay. As I said, I had the opportunity to watch really smart people update a website on their own for the first time as so-called-bloggers.

Here’s what I learned: people like to share. But in their first experience sharing, they forget to share only the relevant bits.

When given the chance to post to a website whatever they want, some people decided to talk about the mundane. Other people had really well-though-out ideas – but some didn’t.

They started posting in a way that was unfiltered. It was their ideas.

I think this exact thing happened on Twitter. People were given the opportunity to broadcast what they were up to, when they were up to it, so they did.

“I’m having a poop.”

“I’m having a ham sandwich”

Indeed, just because people can share what they are doing, it doesn’t mean they should. People on Twitter learned that fast: post about the mundane things, and followers will not increase. Unless those posts are peppered with ones that add value to followers.

And that is the crux of the blog. It is okay to post less thoughtful things. Not every post needs to be a well-though-out essay on a topic.

But, and there’s often a but when one makes a point like “don’t always be relevant”, make sure these posts aren’t the first, and aren’t the most prominent bits of content.

Matt, do you have a point?

Actually, I do. If you aks someone to blog, get a feel for their social media usage. If they haven’t created content on a social network like Twitter or Facebook, then it is likely they will have to learn that it isn’t okay to post every thought.

Just because someone has the ability to post, it doesn’t mean they should.

Websites that are constantly updatable by people are excellent tools for getting attention to something. The ‘blog’ we started is well over 20,000 page views, and it started in late December. It is driving people to become aware of the initiative, so that is a good thing.

In turn, it reminded me about what it is like to create content for the first time online. If your idea involves asking people to create content for the first time, understand there will be a learning curve.

People have to learn to share relevant content.

Maybe I should rename my blog.

What do you think? Have you convinced someone to start posting and then been surprised at the content created?

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Image via CrunchBase

Today Twitter has redesigned. If you visit fly.twitter.com, you’ll see how it looks. On the iPhone, it looks interesting.

I like the “Discover” tab, especially the fact that the logo for it is #, the hashtag on Twitter. I used Discover to see what was happening today on Twitter. It’s like a mini version of LinkedIn today.

I’m not sure about brand pages

The thing about brand pages, is content. Do I want content from a brand? I follow a few brands, but honestly, I don’t have any brands in the lists that I follow. The question is, will I add some brands?

For me, the answer is no. But there are some brands that some people will follow. I’m most interested in what brands will get from the exchange. Presumably, there are some analytics that will come with the brand page.

All of this is an effort to get more people to spend more time on the platform. I visit Twitter.com rather frequently, but most people use Tweetdeck, Hootsuite or one of the many hundreds of Twitter posting tools out there.

These efforts to redesign are an effort to get people to use Twitter.com more often. If that is true, this seems to mean that Twitter will try to monetize through advertising. They will not try to sell the community to Facebook, Google or Apple.

Good for them. Twitter is responsible for the change in the way we interact with brands. Seems like they deserve to be compensated for it.

What do you think of the new look? You can see it here.

Related articles

• Twitter’s Big Redesign Adds Photos, Videos, Brand Pages – InformationWeek (blog) (informationweek.com)
• Twitter becomes more like media company with redesign (lostremote.com)
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• Twitter Joins Facebook, Google+ and Foursquare With New Brand Pages (readwriteweb.com)
• Twitter’s Big Redesign Adds Photos, Videos, Brand Pages (informationweek.com)
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Case in point: I recently moved from a city to a small town. In the small town, I don’t get service with my T-Mobile phone.

No worries.

The only reason I went with  T-Mobile was they had the first NEXUS Google phone. And I really wanted that. In the almost 2 years I’ve been with T-Mobile, they have been excellent. There have been a couple of times when the phone didn’t work – due to coverage issues, but for the most part, they fulfilled their part of the contract.

When I moved, they stopped fulfilling their part of the contract. So I sought to end our relationship.

The customer service guy, we’ll call him Tony, took my call. He asked me the nature of my call.

I have moved to a place that doesn’t get coverage and need to cancel my phone, I said, naively expecting that to be it.

“Can you tell me where you live?” Tony asked.

Not sure why it mattered, I asked.

“I’m here to help you continue to use your phone.” Tony said, earnestly.

“But my phone doesn’t get service. It doesn’t work.” I pointed out.

“Do you have wifi at home and work?” He asked.

I told him I did.

“So your phone works there, correct?” Tony pointed out smugly. Okay, I only picture him with a smug look on his face.

I was taken aback. Was he really telling my that my wifi enabled phone works in spite of their service because I happen to pay for Internet access at home and get it at work? Was he really making the argument that my phone was still worth paying full price at T-Mobile because of wifi?

Turns out, when I signed on with T-Mobile, I signed a piece of paper that said if I moved to a place without service – it was tough cookies for me.

In essence, I would have to pay a termination fee for breaking a contract that T-Mobile was no longer living up to.

And that’s the risk of social media. Ten years ago, you could have a policy that seems to be designed to piss off customers, because no one really cared about pissing off a few customers.

Things have changed.

If we could have split ways today on amicable terms that would be the end of it. I would even say T-Mobile is a good company.

Now they’ve created an enemy.

And for what? A $200 cancellation fee.

If I make one person think twice about T-Mobile – they lose money. If I make 2 people pick another company, they lose massive amounts of money.

Bad customer service is never worth it. Why do big companies persist in it?

Your turn. What are your horror stories? Bonus points if they are T-Mobile horror stories.

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The reality is, some marketing isn’t measurable. As I write this, I’m watching Arsenal FC who have Fly Emirates on their shirts play in the Barclay’s EPL.

Image via Wikipedia

Will this make you drink Barclay’s or book your next flight on Emirates? At half time, there were be a bunch of 30-second spots. One of them was for Mercedes. Are you interested in a car?

On the way to work, you’ll see a few billboards while listening to radio. THe traffic will be sponsored. The news update will be sponsored. If you listen to an NFL game, the drive of the game, the player of the game and perhaps the turnover of the game will be brought to you by something or other.

All of these brands advertise and sponsor to sell product. Even though there is no clear metric on whether the efforts result in the selling of product, the expectation is that not marketing is wrong. Period.

Which brings us to digital.

The difference between the things mentioned above and digital is ‘proximity to purchase’. Online, we’re perilously close to clicking on a shopping cart and buying something. So it’s downright tempting to measure clicks to buy.

And I get that. But when one takes a step back, one can see how silly that is. Because unlike the IRL world, where measurement is based on estimated impressions, online everything can be measured. The metric can be

• Loyalty
• Fandom
• Community
• Engagement
• Shares.

Or it can be something altogether different.

What are we measuring?

Before embarking on anything digital, determine what will be measured. It should never be hits. Measuring hits is almost like measuring impressions.

Instead, think about building a community. Give it 6 weeks and try ways to engage. Don’t leave social media alone on some island. If you have other media, use it to tell people about the social media site.

Social media is about building a community of the best customers and engaging them. And like TV, it is about selling product – getting them to buy product is the reason we do everything we do. Plus, since social media is made up of fans – there’s an excellent chance that someone who sel-identifies as a fan has already bought the product.

So think about engaging fans and building community. And think about ways to measure that. What do you measure?

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Image via CrunchBase

. Here they are:

#1: The profile

Start with a clean LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn offers a little game to making the profile 100% complete. But it is more than that. Add as many skills as you can add. In the summary section, add detail. Here’s a suggest:

1. Paragraph one: a short look at you. Consider this the elevator speech if the elevator was only going one floor. Make the first part of the summary focussed, exception and genuine.
2. Paragraph number two: tell people why they should connect with you. “You should connect with me in order to talk about how to make a better LinkedIn profile.”
3. Paragraph three: people don’t read anymore. But if they do, this is where someone can really talk about their achievements. Think about it like this: imagine that the client or job you always wanted depends on this paragraph. Make it shine.

Add applications if you can that will make the profile be as good as it can be. Every Friday, I try to give a recommendation on LinkedIn. The reason is that many people recommend me back on LinkedIn. Give recommendations, and they will come back to you. recommendations make a LinkedIn profile look better.

Also, if you can answer questions on LinkedIn, then do so. If you get a good answer, LinkedIn will call you an expert in that category. I’m an expert in networking and web development; go ahead, ask me anything.

#2: Add connections.

500 is the magic number on LinkedIn because it defaults to 500+. So 501 connections is the same as 4000 connections at first glance. Look back on Alumni and former coworkers (even at gigs before college) to enhance targeted connections. Think about it like this: if you were a bartender in college, there’s a good chance that some of the people you worked with could be worthwhile connections.

#3: Crete content.

The profile is good. You’re adding connections, now it is time to create content. I use LinkedIn.com/today to generate content for LinkedIn and Twitter. It can be a daily content creator for the feed. For my profile, this blog post will also be a content creator.

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The question is much more straight forward: on the Facebook page, what should you measure?

Loyalty? Fandom? Potential purchase? Purchase? Community?

Measurement is an interesting topic for a couple of reasons.

What are we measuring?

Lets take a step back and look at the 30-second TV spot. Without secondary research from a research company, marketers cannot measure the effectiveness of a 30-second spot. Yes, they can track a whole host of things like brand likability, potential purchase, or even sales. Indeed, one of the critiques often thrown at the Old Spice commercials was it didn’t move more product.

In spite of the fact that TV is hard to measure, we agree it is necessary. When Pepsi stopped doing TV, they lost the number two cola spot to Diet Coke. That might not be a directly related cause and effect, but it sure made the people at Pepsi start doing 30-second spots.

Social media is on the internet, so it MUST be measured.

When social media first came along, the way to dismiss it was simple: does it sell product? Can it be measured? Without measurement, people said dismissively, it isn’t proper marketing. On the internet, there’s an expectation of ‘clicks’. Clicks are so measurable down to the person that we MUST measure them.

To prove that the interent ‘worked’, marketers measured clicks as if they were GRP’s. They were called ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ and ‘views’, but they were clicks and the more clicks that came into the marketing funnel, the more product that would be sold. Get a million fans and some well-thought out percentage of them will buy the product.

I remember one Facebook page that we managed that had almost 100,000 fans in 4 months, but the only thing the person in charge wanted was feet in the store. We tried to tell him what you’re saying that these people are already your best customers, and we should organize around building them into a community. Instead, we did in-store tests whereby one got a free fountain drink between 5-7 pm at one location for saying Facebook.

The point. 

I’m not saying social media is like TV. I am saying that it isn’t like traditional internet marketing. It isn’t an e-mail blast or a banner ad. It is fundamentally different – like TV is different from Direct Mail.

Social media is about building a community of the best customers. People who have tried the product, and like it. It can be about amassing a community of fans for a whole host of reasons. Getting them to buy product is the reason we do everything we do. But it doesn’t have to be the measurable outcome because they already buy product. That is what being a fan means.

“Fans spend four times on the brand they are a fan of compared to nonfans. This is not something we should attribute to the fan page itself; rather this is due to the brand relationship which led someone to become a fan in the first place.”

On some level, this shouldn’t be news. For years there has been un understanding that 80% of business comes from 20% of the customers. In that math, that 20% spends about 4 times more than every one else. I don’t think it’s a stretch to call these people ‘fans’.

So there has always been fans. Those are the people on your company Facebook page. The people who follow the Twitter feed. The people who care about the brand.

What do they care about? They are the ones who will look at the “Making of” a television commercial. They are the people who will look inside the brand, if you give them that look.

Show them the ideas that don’t make it public.

The typical campaign for a brand has dozens of ideas. The internal team then narrows down those ideas to the best ones that go in front of the client. From there, the very best of the those ideas run.

Take the ideas that were scrapped for whatever reason and show them to fans. Explain why the ad didn’t make it. “This ad doesn’t quite show off the fun of doing x. This ad doesn’t do a good enough job of focussing on the great taste.”

Remember, in social media, the brand is talking to people who think it is fun and tastes great. But in showing them a little behind the scenes, you might actually give them content that is sharable.

People like to share inside news. “Hey, check out this ad that didn’t run for brand X”. That is in the wheelhouse of content that is shared. It allows a fan to appear to be in the know.

Far too many Facebook pages are all about contests and ‘Did you knows’. Few give a good look behind the brand.

Many should start. The content is sitting there on the floor.

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That said, it is a place to showcase content. Here’s how:

First, make your LinkedIn profile as clean and sharp as your resume. You should think about your LinkedIn profile as if it is the reason someone will pick to be a business partner. If you find that hard to believe, then I recommend Googling yourself (pro tip, make sure you are not logged in when you Google yourself). The results that come up are the results a person will see after they meet with you in person and then look you up online.

LinkedIn will most-likely come up as the first or the second page. Meaning someone who Google’s you will find LinkedIn.

Make LinkedIn a part of your day.

Fix your LinkedIn profile, then make LinkedIn.com/today a part of your day. LinkedIn.com/today can be the front page of your personal business internet. Tell LinkedIn about your interests, skills and work history, and it will deliver stories based on you.

That is right, LinkedIn.com/today can be your content generating tool. Look at Today first thing in the morning, and share the stories on LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter (if you have them).

Take the morning stories (or the evening stories), and begin to be a content delivery expert in your category. That’s my strategy, so if you want to see what is important to me, follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

What is your content strategy?

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We celebrate things like 100, 150, 1,000 as if they have some sort of additional meaning. Round numbers seem to be a time to reflect.

I tell you this because about an hour ago, this blog went over 100,000 page views. If there was a time to reflect on this blog, this seems like a good time.

I started this blog without attaching my name to it. The goal was to throw ideas on a page and let them simmer. Every posts worked from the primary idea that people like to share. Indeed, they are sharing content in massive ways using so-called social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter.

I started this blog to understand why. An understanding of why can and will help brands and individuals craft strategies to add this content into their plans.

That is easier said than done. For the most part, people share content no because they like the brand, but because they like the person they are sharing with.

Image this scenario: a friend posts on Facebook that he’s looking for a good place to get pizza. In comments, I tell him about XX pizza. My behavior is motivated by how much I like my friend.

However, if I write a blog post about the really good pizza, my behavior is motivated by the pizza.

Understanding the differences and motivations of why people share is the underlying goal of this blog. On a call with a potential new client, I said I understood why people use Facebook, and I think I have a good idea thanks to the ideas I’ve expressed on this blog.

As my career flows in a different direction, it is cool to have this space to work out my ideas. Thanks for being a reader.

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