…or, “What makes a good blog post?”

Yesterday, I entered Matthew Gain’s competition to win a copy of the Problogger book

This was no ordinary competition, there was no right or wrong answer; he asked for our “most successful blog post and explain why” it was the most successful. This got me thinking.

What is “success” in this context? Is it simply the number of page views, or the amount of comments it spawns? Is it about re-tweets or Facebook likes? It could be, if that is what you are after, but I consider success to be the “impact” it has made.

Simple can be effective

My choice was (probably predictably) The 5 C’s of Social media – my post from almost two years ago in which I laid out a simple framework for explaining what social media is: the five base opportunities it affords us.

Did it generate the most page views? No.
Did it spawn the most comments? No.

So why was it successful?

Yes, it was a “list post” and it had a number in the title – two common ways to draw in readers – but I believe the post was successful because of the simplicity of the idea. An idea that resonated, took hold and grew beyond its original intent because of the input of others. An idea that is still relevant today so, with a minor tweak, has demonstrated a longevity beyond anything I could have imagined.

The 5 C’s has been re-used by bloggers, social media “experts” and trainers in one form or another in their own posts or materials over the past two years and continues to have an effect due to simple common sense.

I frequently write long, wordy posts but at the core of everything is usually just an idea – how well that carries over varies. We can get bogged down in complexity and the message is lost but a simple idea well communicated if often most successful.

So why the strange post title?

Sally, my wife (@SallyWalker), was hosting the latest edition of her Socially Sally web TV show and the topic was blogging tips – one such tip was to make an impact, both with the post title and the contents, and not to use titles like “I Just Bought a Loaf of Bread from Sainsburys”.

Out of the blue an idea formed, a challenge for all those attending to actually write a post with exactly that title – a form of viral posting which, perhaps, can have an impact of all its own. As Sally says: “sometimes the crazier the idea, the more it works”.

Image by bufivla.

Twitter have announced that they are banning third party companies from injecting “paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API” in order to protect “the long-term health and value of the network”. As has been evidenced up to now the primary focus has indeed been the twitter platform itself – the longevity of the network rather than short term monetisation.

Twitter argue that a third party ad network may put impressions ahead of the host service itself, thus diminishing the experience and, potentially, leading to a smaller audience as users stop visiting the site.

I am reminded of the argument given by Apple to justify why all iPhone applications must be approved and supplied via the app store: to ensure that the iPhone platform remains stable and free from potentially exploitable flaws.

But how similar are they really?

At first glance there seems a huge gulf between the two philosophies but there is the potential for Twitter to become a much stricter task master, especially when Fred Wilson – a major investor in Twitter – remarked that third party applications are filling gaps in the Twitter ecosystem that Twitter should have filled from the beginning or should be looking to build into the experience.

Twitter are not currently making money from the service but are looking to protect the future; the long tail is where they see the money being recouped but it will be a long hard slog. Reading Dick Costolo’s post on the Twitter blog it would seem that they are just looking to maintain the integrity of the part of the service that they truly control: the timeline, beyond that is pretty much fair game. They are committed to the APIand want to encourage developers to build ‘around’ the timeline but, if we listen to Wilson, for what roles?

Control

Apple, it could be argued, are just looking to control the ecosystem in order to ensure they get a cut of everything. Is it ‘really’ about stability of the platform or just having the power to exert total control? The iPhone world is very much a siloed operation with Apple having the final say and the ability to block anything that threatens their dominance or revenue. Business is business so you can understand that to a point but how far is too far? How many potential customers are put off by the closed system?

At present, the key difference is that advertising comprises only a small part of the Twitter ecosystem and they are NOT looking to prevent ads _outside_ of the timeline, only reserving their right to control what occurs within it. They are not stopping developers making applications and they are expanding the API all the time. On top of all this Annotations are arguably the biggest invitation to third parties you could currently wish for so, the garden looks rosy.

The thing we have to consider, however, is once Twitter start realising an income from promoted tweets will the money start painting a different picture with regards to openness? Are Fred Wilson’s comments an indication of direction or just shooting off at the mouth? When a means to recoup your investment is shown to be working will there be a push to build on it?

As has already been pointed out, Twitter are to introduce their own native link shortener and drop bit.ly as the default option. Twitter has also bought the Tweetie client for iPhone and rebranded it as the official iPhone Twitter application. The interesting point here is that both of these areas were highlighted by Wilson as areas that Twitter should not be leaving up to third parties. What else could be on the hit list, a photo upload service?

On the face of it, if you are looking to provide extended value from your system then do you leave core functionality in the hands of others? Do you risk third parties folding and instantly knocking out part of the ecosystem? Common sense would dictate otherwise but, with a history of unreliability when things get busy, has Twitter learnt from the issues of scale in the past? Could they reliably provide a photo upload service or would we again get a fail whale?

The user

Twitter must, obviously, ask what impact would taking functionality in-house and ‘killing off’ third parties have on the end user? There will always be a high proportion who wouldn’t care as long a they can tweet their friends – just like with the facebook privacy issues. Joe public often doesn’t look beyond the basics. They won’t be concerned with the technology (especially if it is good enough and functional enough) – people adapt.

There would no doubt be a backlash from developers and some of the tech elite; you can picture the #imleavingtwitter hashtag already – but the numbers here, just like with Facebook, are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Twitter will not go to the wall over a small developer rebellion should it decide to exert a greater degree of authority.

Best intentions

Looking in from the outside, Twitter seems to have always been operated with the best of intentions. There are numerous ways that the service could have made a quick buck but opted to retain the integrity with which it was founded. Best intentions can sometimes only go so far and you have to question whether, with investors exerting pressure, whether those intentions could ultimately conflict with the need for the service to survive. It can be a bad sign when the money men start dictating policy and control the direction – let’s hope we never reach that point.

Update

The API Terms of Service have been updated and go further than was indicated in Costolo’s post yesterday. He originally stated:

Companies are selling real-time display ads or other kinds of mobile ads around the timelines on many twitter clients, and we derive no explicit value from those ads. That’s fine.

We now, however, have what appears to be a contrary position in the Terms themselves:

IV. COMMERCIAL USE
2 (a) We encourage you to create advertising opportunities around Twitter content that are compliant with these Rules. In cases where Twitter content is the basis (in whole or in part) of the advertising sale, we require you to compensate us (recoupable against any fees payable to Twitter for data licensing). For example, you may sell sponsorships or branding around gadgets or iframes that include Tweets and other customized visualizations of Twitter.

Two days and two seemingly conflicting pieces of information but, as has been pointed out, the terms do seem particularly vague. We will have to wait to see exactly how they are applied but it illustrates a willingness on the part of Twitter to start setting their sites further afield.

Image by Bala

I read with interest an article by Dan Schawbel over at the Personal Branding Blog which claimes that Twitter is now dead as a marketing platform. 

His reasoning is that as the number of users on Twitter increases and we all start following more people your tweets will get lost among the noise.

What is marketing

Dan defines a marketing platform as “a mass communication tool that allows you convert subscribers (readers/fans) into leads” but goes on to say “It’s not about brand awareness or customer support”.

In the book “Principles of Marketing” marketing is described as “a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want though creating and exchanging products and value with others” but in a business context it involves “building profitable, value-laden exchange relationships with customers”.

It is interesting to note both the words “social” and “relationships” in those definitions. So, to say Marketing is just the process of converting an audience member to a customer is so narrow-minded.

It would appear Dan views marketing as merely the sales pitch but the social web is not, in and of itself, an advertising platform and the usual rules about the promotion of your business or product do not directly apply.

As I said a couple of years ago in my post “Social media marketing – it’s not about the hard sell”

Businesses should not be trying to push their products via these avenues so should not be seeking the best way to market a product via social channels. By creating a relationship with their customers they will instead develop a feeling of trust which itself will lead to initial sales and repeat business.

Simply bombarding potential customers with what amounts to advertisements will not work.

No time like the present

Dan’s article advises moving away from Twitter to “higher conversion platforms” but the thinking is all wrong. A social marketing strategy should encompass as many avenues as possible and be consistent across all of them. Abandoning any given communication channel is to be avoided, especially in these times when we have more choice about how we interact than ever. There are those who do not have a Facebook account or those who will not sign up to mail shots.

There are more Twitter users than ever and the take up is growing at a fantastic rate. As 50% of users are no more than four “friends” away and nearly everyone is covered by 5 steps it is easy to see that word of mouth reports of good customer service etc. can travel far and wide very quickly.

It was argued that “promoted tweets” would be unpopular with a much higher proportion of negative feedback on Twitter following their announcement. This was, however, based on a sample population of only 14 people – hardly conclusive proof. The same query from Twitter Sentiment – at the time of writing – showed a swing to a positive response but with still only a sample population of 38.

When conducting a brand search in Google you expect the results to be ordered by relevance with the primary site for that brand at the top of the list. It makes sense, therefore, that a similar search on Twitter would result in a tweet from that brand (albeit a promoted one) appearing at the top of the results here – how can people have too much of an issue with this?

Direct v Indirect

The social web should be full of people connecting, communicating and contributing – not products, pitching and pressurising; we need to keep the balance and indirect marketing is far more effective in these channels. Word of mouth has already been mentioned but also consider building brand loyalty though openness and approachability as well as conversion via engagement.

Twitter could now be developing into just the right place for enagagement with the proposed functionality of Annotated tweets. Having the ability to embed more into a simple tweet can only serve to enhance the experience.

As part of a comprehensive, consistent social marketing campaign Twitter can be a very important tool in building those all important relationships with customers (both existing and potential) providing you are willing to put in a bit of effort (10 to 20 tweets a day will not be a sufficient investment). Ignore it to your detriment.

Image by jamie.silva

With all of furore over privacy changes at Facebook we need to remember that we need to protect ourselves at all times when on the web and not just from a privacy point of view.

A lot has been made of the changes to the privacy policy at Facebook and the choice of opt-out by default. As I have mentioned before, the real issue is the lack of communication surrounding the change and not providing a notification to check your settings immediately when the changes occurred. Things have come to a head and Facebook have been forced to call an all hands privacy meeting to, at least, show they are doing something and taking the issue seriously.

Privacy is only one side of the coin, however, the other being security. You can hold back all of the information you want but if your PC is not secure any online vigilance could be for nothing.

Warning

I was very surprised yesterday to log into my GMail account and see a warning that it appeared my account had been accessed from the US.

Checking the IP address (67.202.31.60) returns ec2-67-202-31-60.compute-1.amazonaws.com – so, why would an Amazon Web Services machine be trying to use my GMail account? At the time this resolved to “Usage Statistics for community-maps.org”.

I don’t currently follow a large group on Google Buzz but it transpired that three others had also experienced a similar issue being presented with warnings about suspicious activity on their accounts; one accessed from New York when they are in Florida, a second accessed from Egypt when they are in Canada, and the third accessed from Brazil when they are in Italy.

Is this some kind of concerted effort to gain entry to GMail or mere coincidence?

Responsibility

Yesterday, I tweeted:

What did I mean by this? That if you lay everything out online don’t be surprised if it comes back to bite you.

Ultimately, we all have a responsibility to look after our own information on the web – whether that be by only sharing the information we are willing to be made public or by ensuring that our computers are fully protected. We live in a time where virtually our whole lives are played out online and while we entrust certain information to third parties (credit card details etc.) it is up to us to ensure that we draw a line in the sand that we are comfortable with and then not overstep it.

As I mentioned previously, Buzz is gaining momentum but is still in its infancy and needs to develop in order to grab a bigger slice of the pie. The challenge for Google is how best to achieve this; how can Google make Buzz jump from the early adopters to becoming a mainstream service?

It seems that some are blinded by the bells and whistles of Facebook and the reputation of Twitter (built by sheer longevity) and so believe that Buzz is just another also ran – it is too early in the game to make that call.

A post by Shannon Wills at TechShali.com claims that Buzz “has failed to stake a claim in the world of social media” giving 3 reasons why this is the case. The first argument is that Google are too late to the party to have an impact. I say we need to ask if they have arrived after the nibbles have gone and people are making their way home or, are the just fashionably late, know how to make an entrance then capture the imagination of the other guests with their witty repartee – the perfect riposte to the braggado of other networks?

Buzz may not have made the entrance it was hoping for but there is a very solid base. With a bit more work and some additional features Buzz could soon be a major player with the andecotes to wow its fellow party goers.

Gmail, to be or not to be bundled

As Buzz is bundled as a part of GMail there was always going to be a tight integration between the two services which can be a good thing if managed correctly. There have been complaints about inboxes filling up with notifications and this was also given as a reason why Buzz will not succeed; taking control of the settings and muting old threads can cut down on the number of notifications received while still keeping you up to date on the items you are following.

Should Buzz be contained within GMail or a standalone app? I say both. If you are Google you don’t want to disconnect from the millions of potential users already sitting in GMail but it would be nice to use Buzz as a self contained application for those who want to. We can view and comment on our buzz data in our Google Profile outside of the confines of GMail and the mobile page is standalone so the main app needs to follow suit whilst still sticking to it’s roots.

The need to have a GMail account in order to use the service has also been criticised but, considering the integration, it is probably the best way to go. If Buzz could be used as a standalone service, however, then it would also make sense to have a “Buzz only” account which could, perhaps, be registered against your existing, external, email address.

Buzz v Facebook

My previous post prompted some good discussion via a share on Buzz itself. Parvez Halim raised an interesting point:

I think one of the things that makes FB so appealing is that you have different services within one web app. You have microblogging, photo album, chat, and games. Non-techies don’t have to think too much because everything is there in front of them.

I agree that holding all the different facets in one place is indeed nice for those that use them all but what about those who only want to perform specific actions? What if you only want to upload your photos?

I feel that, with some careful work, Google could build on its Profile system and integrate the services you use into one coherent offering despite them being independent applications. If you only use a single app then great, that’s all you are shown but for those using multiple services everything would be held in one place – a tab for each. Keeping each of Google’s services independent is a distinct advantage in my opinion.

Control

With a service such as Buzz we must remember that users want control over what they see. The search and filtering functionality suggested by Robert Scoble, as mentioned before, is a natural progression for Buzz and I can imagine a number of his suggestions being implemented before long. The ability to find all items that a particular person has commented on or to ignore items from a paticular source (e.g Twitter) would be ideal additions and vastly improve the usability of the service.

Historically, Google have struggled when it comes to the social web. Orkut was a failure and development on Jaiku was abandoned. With little consistency between offerings there appeared to be no central strategy to really succeed in the social space but, with Buzz, things are starting to change.

A paradigm shift within the company is evident now that Google have announced they are seeking to employ a “Head of Social”. They are only too aware that they are late to the game but seek to mount a second half fight back. It is clear that individual areas working on their own products need to be brought together under one “social” banner to promote consistency and interoperability. With the right person leading the way Google should be able to regain control and create a comprehensive social policy and – with the technology, resources and extremely knowledge user base at their disposal – turn Buzz (or a decendent) into a world class offering.

Image by squeaks2569