In fact, even in all of the seminars, panels, and presentations I’ve given in the last year, I’ve done my best to avoid discussing Twitter. Recently, I openly asked the audience to stop asking me questions about Twitter (and social media in general) and ask me interesting, hard questions. I might have turned some people off, but I think the majority of the people appreciated it.

So why stray from a good habit?

Something interesting happened in social media, for a change.

This past week, Twitter rolled out a new feature called Lists. Lists are a way to arrange people besides following them. When you create a new list and give it a title, the people you add to that list are quickly and easily associated not just to that title, but to the fact that you applied that title to them.

This is an interesting way to get normal people to arrange other normal people, apply metadata (the name and context of the list), and for people to discover each other thanks to these new, suggestive contexts.

Sounds pretty complicated. I threw in a bunch of big words for effect. What does this boil down to?

Now, I think this is exciting. It’s going to freak a lot of people out. Maybe that’s why I think it’s exciting.

Let’s take a look at the lists I’ve been added to. Check this out:

I took all of the words used to describe me via lists, cleaned them up, and pumped them into Wordle to illustrate prominent terms in my lists just a few days after launch. I’m interested to see how this cloud changes over time.

There are some oddball anomalies, like social media and design, but I’ll take it.

What’s prominent in your list cloud?

On the call, I caught myself spout off one of the important bullet-points for me: “Raising the Intrigue”.

I liked that meme and while it was fresh in my mind, I wanted to riff here.

So the conversation we were having identified that one of the more common uses in social media is the more obvious one: customer service and feedback. Social media excites companies because they have the ability to monitor mentions of themselves, even their competitors, and respond. Unfortunately, in many cases, this gets out of hand quickly and runs the risk of becoming big-brother-y.

Remember, it’s better to guide than to impose.

But what’s this about intrigue? We’re getting there. Hang on to your (tomorrow)pants.

So the other side of the customer service angle of social media is the “open kitchen” marketing affect: in a business, like in a restaurant, I like an open kitchen because a) it’s entertaining and b) it lets me see where my food is being made. People don’t connect with brands or companies, they connect with other people, and the ability to get some insight into the people who make the company “tick” provides value for the customer.

So that’s a reason to initiate with a company’s social media presence. But why would I continue to subscribe/follow/listen? Because that company has done things to “Raise the Intrigue”.

I think this may be one of the many elusive variables to that nasty, nasty concept of something being “viral”. We all know and agree that you can’t manufacture “viral”. But we know what the end goal is: we want people to say “OMGWTF…I have to show my friends”.

But how long does that viral “moment” last? Most viral campaigns quickly hockey stick, and then vanish into the portfolio of the PR company that claims responsibility for it.

Most companies don’t really want to shock their customers into being interested. It’s got the potential to cast shrapnel all over the place (citation: the recent “MotrinMoms” debacle). Are there ways to Raising the Intrigue without shocking the audience? How do you make an experience worth sharing?

STORY TIME! How a little red fish made a big impact

My friend and one of my business partners, Matt Cohen, is the CEO of ChoiceShirts, a respectably large online t-shirt store. ChoiceShirts has always put a huge emphasis on customer service and responsiveness, so getting Matt involved on twitter was a natural move. But that’s not what this story is about.

One of the things that Matt made mention of in his early musings on twitter was his love of Swedish Fish. After a handful of responses from followers about that being their favorite, and Matt got a great idea.

By including a single-serving Swedish Fish and the note above, Matt did two things: One, he created an opportunity to connect with the PERSON behind ChoiceShirts, which is a memorable (and sharable) moment.

Two, he raised the intrigue. By providing some insight into himself, the customer has an opportunity to ask more questions, about Matt or ChoiceShirts. Maybe even about themselves.

That’s even better than a memorable moment.

There’s nothing sustainable about a memorable moment, especially with how short our memories are these days.

Intrigue, however, is easily sustained. So long as you’re continually growing and innovating as a company, there will always be opportunities to intrigue.

What makes you, and your company, intriguing?

Not only did I watch this historic moment on television, I shared it with close friends in a living room.

Not only did I share this historic moment with them, I got to share it with thousands and thousands of other people on Twitter.

We are obsessed with Twitter. It’s a website. It’s a messaging tool. It’s become a development platform, and it’s arguably a protocol. It’s a point of reference. It’s an expression of ego.

But I don’t think that’s why we’re obsessed. I think we’re obsessed because Twitter does something that we long for: it facilitates shared experiences. Twitter, and many other pieces of social technology encourage shared experiences.

Social Media has been purported as a key to the shift in bi-directional communication in PR. That’s great and all, but I’m not sure how long the interest in being able to “talk back to the television” will remain meaningful. I mean how many times have we yelled at the screen and had it do nothing? Just because a human is on the other end of a commercial doesn’t complete the engagement cycle.

So currently, a lot of PR and marketing peeps are trying to get their heads wrapped around the best way to use the tools to engage with their communities. Here’s the kicker: I think they’re working too hard at the wrong thing.

Buzz monitoring has become one of the more common metrics being used right now, and I do believe there is value there. Quite a bit. The adoption of the metrics that can be gleaned from buzz tracking is important, but in this case, I don’t think it’s the point. In my mind, the need for buzz tracking identifies one very, very important metric that seems to be getting overlooked. Buzz tracking identifies that people are talking to each other.

That’s the most important thing.

Once your potential users, users, or ex-users are talking about you, you’ve won. You’ve got their attention, and they’ll broadcast every single thing you do. And, they’ll do it without you having to ask.

Take note: I’ve yet to say that anything about creating a community of users.

Why? It’s not that much work. Once you’ve got more than one user, you’ve got the makings of a community. A great community. A community that you didn’t have to create, it exists simply by being.

I know what you’re thinking…two people standing on either side of an dance floor make for a pretty boring party. Just because you put people in a room doesn’t make it a party, and just because you have more than 2 users doesn’t mean you’ve got a community.

But the game changes once you get them talking to one another. And that’s the role, the unsung metric of buzz tracking. Knowing that the conversations are going on at all, and being able to scan the proverbial room to make sure everyone’s got a full glass, is your most valuable asset.

So let’s move on.

Hear me now, marketing and PR people: people talking about you does not open the door for you to talk about you. Showing up in a conversation about you (or heck, your competition) to talk about yourself is not going to help your cause. It’s like walking up to two people at the cocktail party who are already conversing conversation and blurting out

“HAI, MAI NAYME IZ ALEX AND I LIKE TWEETER TOO!”

It’s not accepted at cocktail parties, and it’s not OK online, either.

What is ok? Be a good cocktail host. If you are listening in on the other guests at the party, be a facilitator. Make sure that their drinks are full, that they are enjoying themselves, and that they get a chance to meet as many guests as possible.

Chris Lehmann gave a presentation about technology in education at IgnitePhilly2 during which he described the technology’s presence akin to oxygen: ubiquitous, transparent, and necessary.

Your role as the social marketeer, the business, or the brand should be the same.

It’s counter intuitive, I know.

You’re used to talking about you. Cut that shit out. Please.

There’s an exception: customer service. The downside to that? Customer service through buzz tracking (be it blogs and twitter) still only service the “elite” technophiles who’ve adopted those tools. Sure, I like that as a blogger/twitter user, I can mention a company and they show up with VIP service. But, as Dave Troy pointed out at Social Dev Camp East, if they aren’t putting energy into improving the customer service measures they already have in place, they are effectively ignoring the majority of the current problems. I like that I’m benefiting from being ahead of the curve, and getting that VIP treatment. But when my mom’s cable goes out, she’s not going to bitch about it on twitter, and she’ll end up frustrated sitting on the phone.

Back to my point about being involved in the consumer’s experience. That experience needs to be like oxygen: it needs to be everywhere (ubiquity), it needs to not feel like work (transparency), and it needs to be something that they feel like they can’t live without (necessary).

You need to make this conversation about them if you’re going to play along.

Be a good cocktail host.

Throw a great cocktail party.

Throw such a great party that everyone talks about how great the party was. And then you can watch the buzz take a life of its own

As a brand, business, or marketer, it’s your job to make the shared experience worth sharing.

Many of you know that I’ve been working with the CEO of ChoiceShirts, Matt Cohen, on a number of initiatives for quite a while. Our most recent partnership has produced something that I’ve talked about doing “right” for quite a while, making a really easy way to put the contents of tweet on a t-shirt.

Why on earth would we do that? Well, a few reasons:

• Matt and I, like many of you, really love Twitter. Like, really love Twitter. I <3 you Twitter.
• Matt and I, like many of you, really love t-shirts. Just last week, Allen Stern of CenterNetworks said to me at DreamIT’s funding day, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you NOT wearing a t-shirt”. It was an off day, what can I say.
• Twitter is a really great channel for collecting funny, inspirational, or memorable one-liners. More and more often, we heard from others or thought ourselves, “that tweet would make a great shirt”.
• We wanted to try out some new tools in the ChoiceShirts design studio toolkit, as well as make a case for how we can build out new ones. ChoiceTweets is one of what we hope are many prototypes to showcase new and fun ways to get your content onto a t-shirt. A new vehicle for your content so YOU can make money. That’s what we’re really excited about.

Neato! So how does it work?

The whole thing is powered by a bookmarklet. You can read more about how that works on our how-to page. Not sure what tweets you might want to put on a shirt? Take a look at some of the one’s we’ve done, as well as any tweets that other users are turning into tweeshirts.

Also, don’t miss the Merlin Mann collection! Merlin’s tweets are often angry, but humorous. As other prolific tweeters have large numbers of shirts generated from their tweets, we’ll add new featured collections. Maybe yours?

Developer support baked in

For the time being, the feature set is small but that won’t last long! In the mean time, if you have created a Twitter client (web or desktop) and want to include “ChoiceTweets support”, all you need to do is add an icon that links to the same URL as the Tweet’s permalink, and change the Base URL from http://twitter.com to http://choicetweets.com. More on that on our Developers page.

GO! Check it out!

This is the first iteration of the idea, and we’re excited to see how people use it and add new features and learn lessons for the next site that we build. That’s why we’re using UserVoice to collect feature requests! Be sure to add your ideas there after you’ve made your first Tweeshirt.

Big thumbs up to Erik Kastner, who took on some fun challenges with generating the images necessary to make this concept work. I always enjoy working with Erik, and look forward to having him continue to lend his development expertise and problemsolving prowess as this project matures.

And of course, I always appreciate Matt’s support and interest in taking new ideas like this for a spin.

So head over to ChoiceTweets.com, and grab the bookmarklet. And let me know what you think!

Note: my buddy Zach Inglis pointed out that some of his coworkers prototyped something similar in the past. We certainly knew that this had been done before, but thought there was LOTS of room for improvement! So thanks to those who inspired our creation, and we’re excited to continue to improve on the idea based on everyone’s feedback!

WARNING: This post contains extreme abuse of twitter lingo like “@replies and DMs”. Generally speaking, I’m opposed to this sort of language, however…the service is cool and I wanted to share it.

Back when the ‘track via SMS’ feature was still enabled on Twitter, I honestly did not use it…I didn’t find myself with a burning desire to keep an eye on any particular keywords. Since then, my use of twitter has increased, and my reliance on it for communication has changed. I won’t say it’s gone up or down, but the way I use it is certainly different.

I find myself checking Summize/Twitter Search much more often for ‘@replies’ to my username and IndyHall. The biggest reason that I rely more on replies via Search is because I don’t follow everyone who follows me. Not because I’m a hater (far from it) but because Twitter is completely USELESS to me with that many people in my timeline. But I’m increasingly disappointed when I miss replies from people who can’t direct message me since I’m not following them back, especially when I’m away from my computer.

So, with Summize being acquired and energy going into the development of the Twitter Search API, I was stoked to see a really great project announced on the Twitter developer list: TweetTrak.

Functional and still low to the ground, TweetTrak uses the Direct Message -> SMS capabilities of Twitter + the search API to return tracking-style information via SMS, with a simple toggle command to turn it on and off.

The new features that are mapped out for the next iteration are smart, too: user ignore, and a control panel to set up your tracking terms (I imagine this will act a lot like Google Alerts, which I also love and use).

So while this entire system still relies on a system that occasionally lags (Twitter’s SMS and the recently acquired Summize), this is the best stop-gap we’ve had since Summize itself, and I welcome it with open arms, especially with all of the conference going I have lined up.

Check it out, and be gentile! And this should probably go without saying: make sure you have unlimited SMS if you’re doing ANYTHING with Twitter via SMS. Don’t be an idiot.