In the case of Snooki, a brand sending competitors’ merchandise to her in an effort to associate her with those brands is innocuous enough.  However, how far does this go?  What happens when Snooki goes from being a luxury “Poser” to an actual “X-fluent” – who can afford the brands she previously coveted?  Luxury brands would be wise to tread carefully on this subject, or risk backlash much like the racially tinged battle between Cristal and mega rapper/trend setter Jay-Z.

How do luxury brands, who pride themselves on exclusivity and refined culture, separate themselves from the luxury “posers” who gravitate towards their designer products because of the aspirational lifestyle that they represent?  This problem has been amplified of late in the luxury goods space thanks to the omnipresence of social media, particularity via Twitter and Facebook.  The open nature of the social web presents a problem to luxury brands, to whom brand image and perception are tantamount to their success.

Instead of the idea of entering the social landscape instilling fear among luxury brand managers, they should embrace this unique opportunity.

Luxury brands will never be able to stop “posers” from identifying with their brand.  In fact these consumers are already on social networks flaunting their love of a the luxury brand and creating conversation and rich media about it regardless of the brand’s presence on social media platforms. Maintaining an “official” social presence, with a targeted content and engagement strategy geared toward reinforcing the brand’s identity, allows a luxury brand to guide the conversation.  Instead of the consumers forming their own opinions without interaction from the brand, the luxury brand can create an authoritative, educational, engaging voice that enhances rather than cheapens the brand, thus countering any potential “Snooki effect”.

(Burberry’s Art of The Trench microsite is a wonderful example of this strategy.  Burberry capitalized on the trend of their consumers’ love of their iconic trench coats as well as the social media trend to post photos wearing designer goods and fashion as a means of self-expression.  The result is a sleek and interactive site that reflects the brand’s message in a young and fresh way, reflecting the changing landscape of how both “X-fluent” and aspirational consumers connect with a brand.)

One of the most interesting points of Perez’s analysis is that the most influential Twitter accounts “hold significant influence over a variety of topics, as opposed to being experts in just one area.”  While many brands on Twitter speak to a particular demographic or topic area; based on this study and the popularity of celebrity Twitter users like Sean “P Diffy” Combs (who tweets everything from concert dates to bible quotes), Twitter influencers seem to be seen as experts on a wide variety of topics.  In fact the study shows that “retweeted users tended to be content aggregation services.”

This information is particularity interesting when we as social media pros think about audience development on Twitter. As we look to develop audiences on Twitter when our clients are in a niche area, gaming, sports, retail etc., is it important to make sure that a brand’s voice offers (or even re-tweets) authoritative information on a wide variety of subjects? Perhaps it is important that a brand’s Twitter voice speaks to what is popular in and around their niche.  For instance, it could make sense for a sports blog to begins discussing a less than popular sport, or maybe they comment on the antics of celebrity athletes, or even the health care debate?

The difficulties in this theory are that it could be hard to reign in “diversifying.” How much is enough? What sorts of topics should a brand discuss? How often should a brand jump on a Twitter trend?  No matter what strategy employed it is my opinion that it is always vitally important that the tweets of any particular brand always reflect back not only to the brand’s core values but to the goals of that brand’s Twitter outreach.  After all, the content aggregation Twitter accounts and news channels are not only speaking on a wide variety of topics but these topics are targeted to speak to a particular niche (current events, politics, sports, etc) and stay on brand message (CNN is the “news leader”).

Do you think this study brings up a good point about diversifying content strategies or are niche approaches more effective? I’d love to hear your thoughts below.

Read more on the study here.

*(Study institutions included: Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS), Germany †Royal Veterinary College, University of London, United Kingdom ‡CS Dept., Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil)

Recently, Chris Brogan’s article “Attention as Currency and Noise” briefly delves in to the concept of attention budgeting, as he explores the value of attention.  As social marketing “pros”,  we are attempting to catch the attention of our target audience in a manner that conveys trust and reaffirms our clients’ brand reputation.  For a busy social media professional it can sometimes be difficult to decide how to effectively manage all of the  “one-to-many” conversations you are having online, which Brogan describes as “where the real value of social media kicks in.”

As with most marketing functions, the first question to ask yourself is “what are my goals?”  Are you trying to grow fans, trying to influence key tastemakers, or trying to drive traffic to your brand’s website? Once you know your goals, you can begin to plan a strategy.  Every brand and every industry will have a different set of problems and solutions.  Since social media affects different industry verticals in different ways, you need to determine an overall social media strategy that works best for each client.

Within that framework you then must decide on a client-by-client basis how much time you should spend on audience development, and on which social platforms to focus your efforts.  Mark Tosczak offers some great ideas on how to determine this for your clients, including focusing on how much content you have, how much time you have to create content, and the importance of taking time to listen, read and interact.  He offers that you should concentrate most of your attention on the “20 percent of tools/sites/strategies that are going to yield 80 percent of your results.”

Once this has been done for each brand I recommend plotting out all your brands and categorizing them by: category/vertical (retail/brick and mortar, CPG, celebrity), goals (brand awareness, fan acquisition, generate UGC), social network (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc.) and then assign the amount of time per week associated with accomplishing each goal.  By placing everything in one place you can determine how much of your day and week you allow yourself to be sucked in to the world of social (which for some of us can border on addiction).

Of course, this is just one method of determining how to budget your attention.  I’d love to hear what’s worked for you? Let me know in the comments below.

“Hello, My Name is Erica and I Am a Twitter and Facebook Junkie”

The key I have found for really understanding Twitter or Facebook (when to use it, how to use it and why to use it) as marketer is simple: You MUST be a fan and consumer of the medium.

In the hilarious article “Are You a ‘Twitter Quitter’” by Michelle Godall, she points out that “the fact remains that personal experimentation of social media is a key prerequisite to helping businesses understand, embrace and use social media effectively.”

The best social media marketers are those that are able to understand it’s workhorses, Twitter and Facebook, from more than a strategic research based perspective.  To join in a conversation with your clients, brands and consumers you need to really understand the ways in which people interact in the social networking landscape from a practical standpoint.  The nature Twitter and Facebook is dynamic and constantly changing; if you haven’t logged in to your Twitter or Facebook account in the past 60 days, you have missed out on how the changes you are simply reading about are affecting the very audience you are attempting to engage.

I have a few ideas for those marketers who want to be better about being advocates as well as consumers of Twitter and Facebook:

1. Why are you here?

Define why you are on Twitter/Facebook.  What is it you want to accomplish? Are you looking for new friends or customers? Are you looking for a way to interact with current fans? Are you attempting to brand yourself?  Once you define a clear reason for being in social media, it can better direct how you use it to accomplish your goals.

2. Be authentic.

Make sure you are who you say you are and what you represent.  If you chose to use an alias make sure that the accurately represents who you ACTUALLY are and the goals you have already defined for yourself within the social media context.

3. Be timely.

Update and engage frequently.  This means checking in to your accounts daily, and sometimes multiple times a day.  Update your Twitter status frequently with information that is relevant to who you have defined yourself to be and the reasons why you are in the space. Remember, “you have to be in it to win it.”  If you aren’t logging in to your social media accounts 3+ times a week you can’t call yourself an expert, your are merely a passive user.

4. Join the conversation in a relevant way.

Interact with other users in a relevant way.  Offer some unique perspective, don’t just rehash (or in the case of twitter re-tweet) news without some perspective attached to it.  Share intellectually stimulating content.  A good barometer of this is to share and interact on things which ignite a passion in you; this includes things that you’d discuss with your friends at the end of the day. The conversations you chose to join should be timely, authentic and true to the reasons for your existence in the space.

Still not sure what types of things will engage your audience? Take a look at the science behind the New York Times most e-mailed posts here.

5. Give back and give “props.”

Stop with the pitches and begging people to re-tweet your content.  Social media is about getting things from people, but much more about what you give.

Are you a retailer? Give away discounts or coupons.  Are you trying to develop your personal brand? Give away advice, inspiration or perspective on your industry.  No one wants to follow someone or engage with a brand that is about one-way communication.  If you are getting something out of the social media space, remember to give back as well. Give people something that will uplift, enlighten, cause them to think, or stimulate conversation.

Another way of giving back is to give “props.”  Acknowledge those fans and experts that inspire you or have something relevant to say.  If a piece of news or content comes your way make sure to give credit to the person or persons that inspired you.

Of course, there are many other ways to effectively engage the Twitter and Facebook  landscape; these are simply a few ideas to initially get the savvy marketer on the bandwagon as not only an expert, but a fan.   Join me in my addiction, become a fan, not just a spectator.

In our experience, many of the Twitter trackers currently on the market do not have the capacity to accurately monitor the exact number, nature and content of Twitter user name mentions on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.  Luckily, we marketers now have a few options for Twitter back-up to help us track and archive our tweets.

Some of our favorites are listed below:

1. TweetDumpr as the name suggest dumps your Twitter time line into a CSV file.  For those users with large public timelines (it cannot dump from private/protected accounts) the site will send you an email once your file is ready for download.  We also like Twitterscribe for this type of functionality as well. The main drawback of these services is that they don’t have a way to archive for anything other than your tweets—sometimes you want to find old direct messages and those elusive mentions.
2. TweetBackUp has a great and easy to use API.  Its basic (free) service doesn’t offer much more than a daily dump of the last 3,200 or so tweets; however, unlike some other services mentioned here, TweetBackUp automates this process.  TweetBackUp also allows you to review your data in a variety of forms including RSS and HTML formats.  Where TweetBackUp really shines is in its premium service offerings which allow for a CSV file dump in addition to the other formats offered with the basic service and it allows you to access more than one Twitter account, search hashtags and archives twitpic photos.  The premium service is a good value at only $12/year.
3. TweetSaver pulls in all your latest tweets (up to the last 3,200) and allows you organize, tag and search the information easily.  TweetSaver also is one of the few services that also pulls your mentions in addition to direct messages and favorites.  The main drawback of this service is that it costs money to join.  However, you can join for as low as $10 a year with their graduated pricing plans.
4. TweetTake is a FREE service that allows you to archive any of the Twitter features you’d have access to on your account such as tweets, followers, friends, direct messages and the like.  You can either aggregate these things in one search or search within a particular category.   You can download the information in an Excel compatible format.
5. Lifestream Backup is a Twitter archiving service but is much more than that.  Lifestream Backup connects to your Twitter account as well as other social accounts like Flickr, and WordPress (and in Beta Facebook, Gmail And YouTube).  This service doesn’t track mentions unfortunately, but it does allow you to access more than one Twitter account and compare it to your activity on other social networks.  The priciest of the offerings mentioned here its $30/year for up to 20GB of storage, and hosted on Amazon’s S3.

What have you found? What’s your favorite service for this functionality?