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The importance of choosing your Twitter Avatar...

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social media platforms in the world, with over 10million users and millions of tweets each day. This week, Twitter broke it's own record, following the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden; the site experienced a maximum 5106 tweets per second and an average of 3440 tweets per second from 10.45 to 12.30pm. (Stat thanks to The Wall and full article available here...) 

With statistics that high and the potential to interact with that many people, it is no surprise that more and more users are joining! An account is easy to set up and enables the user to include a description of who they are and what they do, additional links (e.g. blog, facebook, website), as well as an 'avatar' with a picture of the person, company etc. For personal use, the avatar is arguably not that important, because your followers are likely to know you by sight and/or be interested in what you have to say. The same is true of celebrities, as their twitter handles, updates and image will all be instantly recognisible to the audience.

As a business however, you have to work hard to stand out in a crowd, developing relationships by offering intelligent insights, following the right people and offering value to those you follow and who follow you. It's amazing however just how many business users fail to get the basics right at the beginning...

A sweeping statement maybe, but from our own experience, one of THE most important things that a Twitter user can do is to pick the right avatar! Twitter forces users to pick a square image, which will be resized to 128px square. This isn't much space and it gets even smaller once you're viewing the stream - just 48px square:

It really isn't that big and a space this small makes it difficult to read text or identify what's in an unclear picture. At the moment, apt currently follow just under 1000 users, which can get confusing when we're trying to keep up with the stream! We don't want to reduce the number we follow as each user has something unique to offer, but we do want to make sure we can identify each one separately. As such, we've produced our top tips for picking an Avatar that makes a statement:

1. Choose your own picture - there's nothing worse than the default twitter 'egg'; this makes you seem like a spambot and you'll have to work harder to develop the relationships. 
2. Keep it simple - don't pick a complex pattern, a grainy or dark picture or something completely unrelated to you!
3. Don't include lot's of words - Whilst a typographic logo will work, a strapline will be too small to read and uses up valuable space. Don't bother!
4. Make sure it fits - A lot of logo's are rectangular, however the Avatar is not. Try to make sure your logo fits within the space available, even if you have to design a special twitter graphic, otherwise it looks messy!

Bonus Tip:

• Test it out - Don't rely on assuming it'll look ok, post a tweet then check how it looks in the stream - does it fit, can you read it, is it clear?

Out of our 1000 followers, here are some (but not all) of the examples that catch our eye... 

@BtoBSocialMedia
 

@visitEngland
  

@MumsnetTowers 
 

@wwtconservation 

@goodandbadpr
 

There are plenty of other examples out there and these are not all of those which catch our eye, but they are good business based avatars and they work for us!

Brilliant use of social media/twitter!

 
Having a little browse around the internet today for innovative marketing campaigns and happened to stumble across 'project reindeer'. Project Reindeer is a fab use of social media (particularly twitter) by GAP in the US.

GAP has set-up a 'live-feed' of a herd of 8 reindeer, to bring you five days of deals. You can then 'track' the reindeer on their journey around their pasture. Each reindeer has been given a name (Emma, Zoe, Cooper, Stella, Chloe, Toby, Duke & Bailey) as well as a daily 'special offer' attached to them. For example, today Zoe has 40% off all women's clothing. The reindeers are then set a challenge; yesterday it was the longest distance travelled, today it's the fastest speed over 24 hours. To help them win the challenge, all you need to do is 'tweet' your favourite reindeer (using the link) and then the one with the most tweets is the winner. That offer is then available on the GAP website, with a special discount code being released.

The process and website is a little complex and it isn't immediately clear what you're doing, but once you know, you have to admit it's a pretty clever use of Twitter! Brilliant! See the website here...

Fancy travelling round the world for free?

British man Paul Smith has done just that by travelling around the world using only the kindness of his Twitter followers.

After returning from his honeymoon in New York, Paul a 34 year old freelance writer, decided to try to get to Campbell Island which is 200 miles off of the coast of New Zealand in 30 days. After Tweeting his plan, it seemed most people were unmoved by his idea, until famous author and TV personality Stephen Fry heard what he was attempting to do. After Tweeting to his own followers, Fry caused a succession of people to contact Mr Smith and offer their help. 

With Twitterdom following, Paul managed to get all the way to Stewart Island through help from his new found followers. Help ranged from shared hotel rooms and car lifts to ferry tickets and finally a flight home paid for by Air New Zealand.

Paul managed to get all the way to Stewart Island and could see his target destination across the water, but was unable to reach it when no one came forward to assist him on the final leg of his journey. He admitted although he was upset to fail when he was so close to reaching his goal he was inspired by the amount of people he found willing to help out a complete stranger. Not only that, he managed to be interviewed on Good Morning America and partied with super celebs such as Liv Tyler, Eva Mendes and Jessica Alba... so all in all it is unlikely to be seen as a wasted journey!

After his 30 day journey he returned to his family and wrote his book Twitchhiker which is likely to be compared to Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack; but will be for those of you who wish to travel using Twitter as opposed to good old fashioned Google.

 

Right you have your guide book, your Twitter account, your 140 characters or less declaration and your followers. See how far you can get. Ready, set, go....

Old Spice is back and taking the social media world by storm!

If you had asked us last week what Old Spice was, we would have either said ‘a fragrance that my granddad wears’ or ‘pepper that you haven’t used in a while’ and up until yesterday that’s probably the response most of you would have given.

However yesterday all that dramatically changed...Old Spice launched one of the most outstanding social media campaigns we have witnessed since the age of...well, since the age of social media!

The campaign started with an ominous tweet from the Old Spice twitter account which said “Today could be just like the other 364 days you log into twitter, or maybe the Old Spice man shows up.” And show up he did!

On Tuesday, Old Spice man Isaiah Mustafa began collecting questions posted at him on sites like Twitter, Reddit and Yahoo Answers, and answered them with personalised YouTube video responses. (He even proposed to someone on a commenter’s behalf!) This of course then created amazement as within minutes they could watch their response, which were then blogged and tweeted like wild fire – everyone wanted their own Old Spice video!

The campaign has been, and still is, such a success because they made personal connections with influencers. They reached out, by name, to prominent media, celebrities, news outlets and the general public who should be aware of Old Spice, addressing them with personalized messages that they’ll remember. As a result Old Spice is now the third most watched video on youtube.

Have you got your personalized message? We are joining the thousands by trying to get ours!

To tweet or not to tweet?

 

Ah, the seemingly unstoppable force of Twitter. With the huge momentum Twitter has gained and the attention from mainstream media, everyone seems compelled to join in.

The job then, isn't one of convincing clients they should get on board, more an educational job in telling them how they can use it.

The question then: can all businesses positively leverage Twitter? The simple answer is yes. The more complex answer involves another question: what do you want to achieve?

Twitter, as I see it, is a networking tool. And - as with the best forms of networking - it's about forming and fostering long-term relationships.

It's not a quick fix and never will be. It's not even about making sales, not initially. It's about identifying the community surrounding your business and engaging with them.

The benefits are far-reaching. From market-testing to competitor analysis, from customer service to brand-building. This young platform is still finding its feet and so are its users.

Where we can help is in setting out a framework, planning content, devising attraction strategies and, most importantly, channelling energy into the right activities.

For tweets sake!

 

OK, so we've been bad. We haven't kept our twitter account up-to-date. We've been making sure our clients do but not us :-( Anyway, busy though we are, we had to share our thoughts on Twitter. We may not practice what we preach but we still like to talk 'tweets'.

Twitter's a great tool, with a rapidly growing number of users and a stack of mass-media mentions, which surely mean it has gone 'mainstream'. I think it's great that something with such potential (particularly for businesses) is being brought to the masses, I really do.

However, if I hear "yeah, it's like Facebook but..." about Twitter once more I think I'm gonna...or "Stephen Fry has a million followers"...or "people just say what they had for breakfast"...AAAARRRRGGGHHH!!!!!

Suffice to say, please, if you must pass comment, at least USE Twitter before you do. Do not simply regurgitate these dumbed-down tidbits and soundbites in the hope of looking knowledgeable.

Right, back to work :-)

Amazing twignorance!

Twitter-bashing seems to be all the rage at the moment. Collectively with other platforms, it's being blamed for pretty much everything, even exposing children to pornography and drugs! 

BBC blogger Rome Hartman is the latest to put the boot in, wheeling out the seemingly age-old 'what I had for breakfast' cliche. It's such a tired, one-dimensional argument. Really, what proportion of twitterers actually tweet like this?

The comments on the post contain some fantastically funny (and ignorant) criticism of the platform. I just had to share a couple...

"...anyone with a little expertise with Google anyone can 'eavesdrop' on what's being posted..." (Oh no! Lots of people will read my personal thoughts and insights. Err...isn't that the point?)

"Once folk begin to realise that life and real news is passing them by...they'll give it up." (Where exactly is this "real news" you speak of? Oh sorry, you mean in newspapers obviously. Silly me.)

So, why is it currently so popular to be negative about twitter? Personally, I think it's a mixture of lack of understanding and fear of the unknown.

We are in the middle of a communication revolution and people will have to get on board sooner or later. That is if they want to stay in business...or even stay in touch for that matter.

Picture courtesy of Geek & Poke