Today that school has grown from 6 students to over 350. The students are on Twitter, they are blogging, and now have laptops and some nice books.

TweetsGiving 2009 from LittlePurpleCow Productions on Vimeo.

Scheduled for November 24 – 26, 2009, the 48-hour event created by US nonprofit Epic Change will encourage participants to express their thanks using online tools and at live events. Join the celebration: www.tweetsgiving.org

If there is not a Tweetsgiving near you, give thanks by donating $10 by just text ‘thanks NY’ to 85944. Multiple texts = multiple donations

The Ugly Was Brought!

On Friday I was very excited to attend New Media Atlanta. Thursday evening I was fortunate to go to the speaker dinner and meet several of the presenters, the co-founders, and those who worked behind the scenes. The one thing that each player had in common is that they were all pumped about being part of the very first New Media Atlanta! I was excited too!

At the start of New Media Atlanta, after the opening comments by conference founders Matt Fagioli and Brad Nix, Jeff Turner took the stage for his presentation on Social Media Is Here To Stay. It was 10 a.m., the conference was just kicking off, and Jeff brought attention to the conversations that were going on through BackNoise. BackNoise claims …

“BackNoise lets you create conversations on the fly, in meetings, watching TV, during class, on the train, anywhere and anytime. Talk about what you want, when you want, where you want, and how you want.”

BackNoise is a channel that allows people to express themselves, anonymously or known, in a real-time online conversation. What started out on BackNoise that day as speaker feedback and comments that people were tired or thirsty, quickly spiraled downhill to what I believe, people who brought out their “ugly.”

Photo via @BeeRealty

There are certain people in this world that have the disco balls to say pretty much about anything. Chris Brogan was the main speaker at New Media Atlanta and embraced BackNoise by presenting with the backchannel behind him. There were some interesting comments such as his fly was down and that the more he cursed, the more an anonymous BackNoise user wanted to kiss him. Funny, right? Brogan has the disco balls though. Everyone in conference attendance was waiting for the moment that he took the stage. They know him, or have heard of him, and respect his reputation.

What about a speaker that isn’t as well known and adored? Does this mean that it’s okay to send a BackNoise comment that encourages the audience to cough two times if you don’t like their presentation? What about stretch if you don’t like the next one? Believe it or not, that’s what happened!

I’m sorry, but to attend a conference and revert back to middle-school mentality is pathetic. If I knew who started these behaviors on BackNoise that day, I would call you out publicly, but alas, you were anonymous. I have no problem with people suggesting that the content presented was weak, or that you’re bored or tired but at some point, grow the heck up!

If you are bored, say why. If you were a speaker and getting bashed, wouldn’t you want to know why?

I don’t think trying to get people to cough is going to help someone learn where and how they can improve. I also don’t think that by creating fear for future speakers is going to make any speaker become better at it!

We encourage people in the online space to be real and transparent, pay-it-forward, not to be a social media douche bag, etc. Why do these understood rules of common decency fly out the window when you don’t actually have to be accountable for your words and actions? They shouldn’t.

When users on the backchannel complained about it being too dark, the lights were turned on. When comments suggested that we needed a break, a break was given.

It is very clear that New Media Atlanta was paying attention to what attendees were saying and constructive criticism was able to bring about positive change. I like that. This also means that speakers were able to see what was said about them. Comments that attacked speakers on a personal level more so than the content that they were delivering, well, I tend to like that less.

Backchannels Are Here To Stay

There is no doubt in my mind that people will continue to use backchannels. After attending New Media Atlanta, it is only my hope that people will choose to use them in a more constructive way. We all like to laugh and feel part of a group, which is what platforms such as BackNoise allows, but where do you draw the line?

I admit that I looked at the backchannel conversations that took place at the conference. I admit that some comments made me laugh. There is something extremely intriguing about watching a stream of thoughts from people that don’t have to identify themselves for speaking what a lot of us might be thinking … but crossing the line of professionalism to middle-school bully is something that can be avoided.

Think about your words. Thumper said, “If you can’t say something nice … don’t say nothing at all.” Backchannels give us the room to dismiss that message and also the accountability of our words. Would you participate on a backchannel? If so, where would you draw the line?

Word of mouth is great. It is marketing’s pot of gold. But one step beyond good customers talking about your business, are customers that become crazy, enthusiastic fans of your business. The ones that tell everyone about you and your product, the ones that sing your praises.

Call them champions. Call them evangelists. With a little help from you, more of your best customers can rise to that next level. Shouting your good deeds from the rooftop (or Facebook even).

Having a quality product is of course step one (let’s hope you have that one covered). Being remarkable in some way can create plenty of word of mouth on it’s own. And many of the steps below can be summed up as “building real relationships with your customers”. Still, I am thinking 44 concrete examples might help a little.

Please feel free to reblog this if you want, just please link back 44 Ways To Help Your Customers Fly.

Make Customers Feel Special

1. Create a reward program, allowing customers to accumulate points, earn discounts/prizes
2. Allow customers to influence your products/services (see Dell’s IdeaStorm)
3. Have contests that require very little action by the customer (“100th customer of the summer gets a free reward”)
4. Have customers give away swag for you (see @MommyBrain at Blogher)
5. Create official champions that believe in your company, that can help you hold events, educate other customers, and create content

Simple Steps

6. Start internally, look to employees, relatives, and friends for your biggest evangelism opportunities (see IBM’s employee blog network)
7. Teach Employees to spot potential evangelists
8. Create tags/hashtags/keywords that allow your customers to signal when they are discussing your company online
9. Take surveys of your customers, display the results (on and offline)
10. Encourage customers to check in on Facebook, Twitter, etc. (see Jet Blue at SXSW)

Connect and Educate

11. Hold classes, webinars, seminars to teach customers relevant skills (see Hubspot’s webinar series)
12. Provide content that helps customers that are parents teach or entertain their children
13. Find customers that are using your product or service in a unique way and feature them for others to learn from
14. Create a meetup group around a topic relevant to your business (discussion group,  monthly book club, health/fitness club)
15. Build communities online around existing social networks (see Graco’s Flickr group)

Content Creation

16. Interview happy customers on video (case studies, testimonials, reviews, unique use of products)
17. Quote customers as often as possible. Other consumers will trust them before they trust you
18. Customer submitted product photos (see Threadless, Carhartt)
19. Customer submitted video contests (see Late Night Jimmy Fallon Dance Challenge)
20. Feature customers on blog posts, give faces and personality to your community

Customer Service

21. Use unique feedback channels (Facebook, Twitter, Online chat)
22. After resolving customer complaints, ask them what else you can do to improve their experience
23. Suggestion box, online or offline, reward customers who make suggestions (see My Starbucks Idea)
24. Forums, allow customers to help one another, answer each others’ questions
25. Monitor blog searches (Google Blog Search, BackType) for comments and posts that complain about or suggest improvements to your business (and respond to them)

Be Creative

26. Photo opps, bold visuals for customers to share online (see Dominos)
27. Interview current evangelists about what they love about your company
28. Give your customers business cards to give out (discounts would help of course)
29. Ask customers to help hold an open house, or anniversary event
30. Give away swag (customers wearing t-shirts, hats, bags, etc. are strong reminders), especially to return customers (see free Gmail stickers)

Blogging

31. Exchange discounts for part time bloggers
32. Let customers decide between two coupons that you will offer each week or month
33. Feature vendors/partners and how they help you offer a better product
34. Make it easy for your readers to share your content (Sharethis, Addthis, Tweetmeme)
35. Create a podcast where your customers are the stars

Facebook

36. Feature photos of your customers with your products and at your events (see Zappos photos on Facebook)
37. Wish your customers happy birthday – simple and easy – we all like birthday wishes
38. Help promote community events and events hosted by your customers
39. Hold contests for your Facebook fans, give them riddles, ask them to write haikus, celebrate the winners, give them prizes (see Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice)
40. Become a fan of and participate on community related pages, for your city, your neighborhood, local philanthropies

Twitter

41. Link to your customers – again, feature them as the stars (see Trader Joes)
42. Use Twitter Search to look for links to interesting stories relevant to your niche. Share them and give credit to the source (see Whole Foods)
43. Ask questions of your followers and write a blog post that quotes the best responses
44. Study and respond to your critics, or better yet, study and respond to the critics of your competitors

Be creative, have fun, invest in your customers – and they will invest in you.

Feel free to add your own ideas in the comments. The more the merrier.

Photo Credit: Anirudh Koul

The Invisible Twitter n. – The content users miss since Twitter stopped showing all  @ replies

I doubt most people still realize how the @ replies really work. Twitter said they had a temporary and a long term solution. Until that long term solution surfaces,  you only see the @ replies your followers send when you follow both people, or when the reply is not a reply.

My Conversations Are Now Silos

I went to read a blog post today from a good friend. I found this post on their Twitter stream. I thought the post was an important one and could not believe it had not generated any @ replies. I did not see much discussion. I decided to check out their Twitter.com profile to see if The Invisible Twitter was responsible. It certainly was. I was missing a lot. I am noticing more and more how siloed some of my Twitter conversations have become.

I am still missing content from smart people and I do not like it.

The Simplest Point

Just because I am talking or replying to a single person, does not mean others may not benefit from the content? Or more importantly that others may have something of value to improve a discussion.

There was almost universal use of a first character solution at first: putting any character in front of the @ symbol. But most of us, including me, are not using this solution as much if at all. It is so easy to forget. And you lose the ability to track back to the original message, forcing me to decide between two features.

Cliches Not Networks

Discovery and virtual people watching is one of the things I love about Twitter. Much of this discovery comes from seeing who the people you follow talk to. If I have a trusting relationship with one person, and I notice they are talking to other specific people quite often, it behooves me to check those people out. Yes this still happens, but I feel like it happens less and less.

The Quiet Blue Yonder

Some people on Twitter send upward of 50% to 75% of their tweets as @ replies. That can equal out to a lot of missed content if we do not follow all the same people.

Twitter is still of value to me, and I can’t really be sure how much the experience has changed. But it seems so against the original nature the social platform that is Twitter. I hope The Invisible Twitter erodes, somehow, and the simplest bits of discovery don’t dissapear completely.

I have been to 4 conferences this year, Blogher being number 5, where I decided to actually attend the event the week before it was held. Meaning no conference registration, hotel, or flight was booked.

Seems like poor planning, but for the most part these events were not must attends for me. The most recent was the Enterprise 2.0 event in Boston. I went because there were dozens of people that I have met at other conferences that I just wanted to see.

I Invest In People

If you know me, you know I love to travel and I don’t go to conferences for the content. I go purely to see the people. Occasionally I wander into a session or keynote when I have to, but it is reluctantly.

Do not get me wrong, there is plenty of great content out there, though I would argue at most events it is pretty hit and miss. And I am sure I am missing out on some of it. But I much smaller intimate conversations with the smart people and people that I call friends at these events. I go to connect with them, to learn from them, to challenge and be challenged by them.

This connecting and challenging happens less for me when I sit and listen to an unorganized panel or a speaker talk about how to improve my blog.

Events Get Louder As They Get Closer

So considering my focus on people, I rarely see a conference announced and KNOW right away that I want to be there. What typically happens is I hear a little bit about it from one person, and then another, and so on. As events get closer, these little teasers get more frequent and louder.

And while I love meeting new people, the more friends I know will be at an event, the more likely I am to attend. It seems this usually builds to a crescendo the week before the conference. I eventually see too many cool cats are going, and I have to give in and share in the fun.

So if you see me at a conference, please say hello, and let’s skip a session or two and talk shop.

Some describe noise as irrelevant content in reference to a subject matter when looking at data in a particular channel. Noise can be spam. Noise can be repeat content from the echo-chamber of the world wide web. Either way, filtering the noise should be on everyone’s mind today as we’re evolving from the static web to the conversational web to the real-time in your face web.

As someone who loves technology, gadgets and information, the real-time web is a geeks’ dreamland, but it’s also a huge time waster if you don’t have filters setup. Not only do you need filters to manage information gathering and filtering information online, but you also need self control. There are plenty of tools available, but it’s how well you manage those tools to filter the noise. Below are a few of the tools that I use.

RSS Reader

To manage my RSS feeds, I use Google Reader, just like Jason and Taylor. I’m currently subscribed to over 1600 feeds, each categorized into groups by topic.  Some of my groups include Wordpress, Social Media, business, mac news and mobile. My RSS feeds list continues to grow, therefore having them categorized is very important. Inside of Google Reader I have a personal star rule. I star items that I want to read later and share items that I think others will find interesting. In other words, RSS feeds are not dead, and are very important to the social web.

Social Bookmarks

For social bookmarks, I use Diigo to bookmark blog posts that I may not be subscribed to, and save them to content-based groups. I have set up groups for topics like wordpress plugins and wordpress premium themes for blog posts pertaining to each.

Real-time

Gmail Filters

Netvibes

Every morning the first thing I do is open my Netvibes account. This pulls all the stories from my favorite news sites (BBC, Mashable, Wired, TechCrunch, Telegraph, TheNextWeb). Not only does it pull in these news sites but it also pulls in my Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts. The reason why i choose Netvibes over Google Reader is because of the layout format. It shows me all the sites in mini format, on one page just like a newspaper. It enables me to check all my news without having to leave the site.

Tweetdeck

As more and more people are becoming their own news outlets, Tweetdeck enables me to follow the streams of people i deem bring me important informative news about my industry. For example i follow Mike Butcher, iJusine and Robert Scoble’s Twitter feed to see what they are up to, who they are meeting and any links they share.

Twitter hashtags

Twitter search enables me to search for a topic or subject of interest eg. #iranelection Twitter search produces real time search results for the searched topics which enables me to find out what people are thinking/talking about right now on a topic.

Beth Harte is a marketer, blogger, speaker, communicator, thinker, connector (people & dots), adjunct professor and Community Manager for MarketingProfs. Beth’s blog, The Harte of Marketing is featured in AdAge’s Power 150. Beth also blogs for MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog.

The more you engage in social media, the more you realize that there are a lot of folks out there talking just to talk and that there are some folks that aren’t as well known, but are absolutely brilliant. Of course, brilliant is a highly subjective term. For me brilliance isn’t someone who’s like Einstein. For me a brilliant person is the one who has a unique voice, isn’t a lemming, questions the status quo, always tries to spark a conversation (no matter how small or large) with an insightful post, tweet or comment, and someone I learn something new or different from.

So, how do I cut through the clutter to find these brilliant people?

Tweetdeck

When dealing with Twitter, I like to use Tweetdeck because it allows me to create groups…lots of groups! I create groups of friends, people who tweet on certain topics, keywords – you name it!
The more I can slice and dice (I am a marketer, after all), the more I can find those brilliant people and nuggets of information that they might be sharing.

BackType

BackType is a cool site that allows you to keep track of your comments, people who have commented about you and, more importantly, the comments that people you follow leave for others. BackType also allows you to search on keywords, again, very helpful to a marketer. The best part about BackType is I can see where the people I follow leave comments, which helps me to find blogs or smart folks that I may not have known about.

Google Reader

I’d be lost without my Google Reader. Every time I find a new blog using the tools above, I add it to my Google Reader. You can imagine that over time, I have a TON of blogs bookmarked. Every morning, I change the reader to the “All Items” view and I scroll down all the posts, not by blogger…but by date. Those with the best or intriguing titles win my attention. Again, I also look for posts on topics, people’s names, and information I might not have had access to previously.

These tools might seem basic, and perhaps not so cool, but for a marketer, they relieve a lot of the time burden that social media places on us.

Guest blog post by Taylor Davidson (@tdavidson); innovation, photography, travel and entrepreneurship, in some continually shifting combination and order.

Each one of us makes a very personal decision about how to find, filter and understand information to help us live our lives and succeed in our careers. Our goals, interests and personal styles shape what, why and how we sift through the content and context created by the maze of interactions on the web. Instead of focusing on the strategies and tactics that I use to filter the web, consider my own methods and tools as just the best way that I know how, right now, to achieve what I want; like all of us, I’m always looking for ideas and ways to improve.

Considerations and Creating a General Philosophy

Before you think about tools, think about you and what you want to achieve: how much time do you have to devote to consuming information? How much noise is “too much” for you? What methods have you tried, for how long, and what has been successful for you? What networks do you use to connect to people and information? What do you want to do with the information, insights and (hopefully) knowledge that passes through your filters? For example, do you want to find new sources of information, cut out repetitive sources, reduce the time you spend online, spend more time creating, automate your filters, focus on breaking news or in-depth, timeless analysis?

Think about these questions to create your own strategies and goals, but I’ll start with outlining my general philosophy:

• I devote an hour or two a day to reading news and in-depth analysis, and I like following a range of topics and a wide range of people.
• I’m willing to dig through a fair amount of noise to find great signals.
• I try to use algorithms and people to curate my news; I use a mix of searches and popularity-ranking algorithms to find information, but I depend on people to filter content and add their own analysis and point of view.
• I do not read newspapers or major primary news sources; again, I depend on interesting people to find what I should read.
• I feel no need to read everything that pops through my filters; if it’s important enough, it will find me again eventually.
• I’m not terribly concerned with keeping up with the real-time web; it often takes a bit of time to truly process new information and understand the second-order impacts.
• I love to engage bloggers and comment on posts in order to learn, refine my thoughts, and dig deeper into topics with knowledgeable people.
• I want to structure and pass on the information that I find in a way that goes beyond just passing along information but adds something to the conversation, whether it’s an insight, a connection between bits of information or people, or simple something too interesting not to share with my friends.

Given the philosophy, how do I do it?

Using Feeds to Follow People: Blogs, Backtype, Twitter

Blogs continue to be the focus of my filtering efforts due to my focus on long-form content, but as more and more content and interactions have shifted to micro-interactions I find myself needing to use more platforms to find information, links and people.

I use Backtype to create RSS feeds of searches through comments for terms and topics of interest, but I truly enjoy following the comment streams (using RSS feeds) from individuals as a way to see what is truly important to them.

I use Twitter to find links to information, but I don’t use any special tools or tactics other than dipping into the stream from time to time. I use feeds from Twitter search to follow certain keywords, but I also follow @ replies to certain people to see who is talking to them or sharing information with them.

Organizing the Feeds: Google Reader and PostRank

I know many people have sworn off RSS, but I continue to use RSS and RSS readers (my personal choice: Google Reader) as a way to consolidate the streams of information. I use RSS to bring to me a mix of blogs, searches and Google Alerts to follow the web, and I use categories in Google Reader to attempt to structure the information . I have a “best” category to follow the sources I find to be consistently interesting and a mixture of other categories organized into different topics or goals. This is far from static: I add and remove feeds, blogs, categories constantly to find new sources of information and new ways to organize.

Additionally I use PostRank and AideRSS’s Google Reader Firefox extension to integrate PostRank with Google Reader in an attempt to figure out which posts are “can’t-miss”; but given that I am open to sifting through a lot of noise and that I depend on many people that do not have a huge following, I find Postrank isn’t the best fit for my own filtering strategies. I’ve tested BlogRollr and Filtrbox to find and filter information, but I’m always on the lookout for new algorithms and methods for adding more “relevance” and context to my filtering tactics.

Yes, that’s a simple set of tools, somewhat inefficient and ripe for over-consumption, but the benefits from depending on loose networks and “structuring serendipity” to introduce me to great concepts, insights and people is simply too great to give up … yet.

I was in severe pain. Could not walk, eat, drink, and could barely talk on the phone to my friends and family. I even learned what hyperventilating was like.

But most importantly, I was reminded of the best in people, online and off. That alone made it a good day.

I Will Likely Marry a Nurse

My first Tweet from the hospital was inspired by the nurses whose care I was in. “I hate hospitals but nurses are some of my favorite people…”

I am always amazed at the kindness they shower upon patients. I rarely have been in the care of a nurse who did not improve my mood. Their gifts of listening and empathy never fail to impress. And all while working long, long hour surrounded by death and disease.

And, of course, my nurses were very curious when I tried to plug in my iPhone charger while they plugged an IV into my arm. I even taught them a little about Twitter.

The Currency of Connections

Many would view a hospital visit as too personal of a moment to share with the world, must less tweet about.

So why share such a personal moment?

Relationships are about investing in each other. Sharing personal experiences is a piece of that investment. I learned a long time ago that vulnerability can be an asset. When we allow others to see our weaknesses, we form more rewarding relationships.

Privacy is important online. All of us draw personal boundaries with what we choose to share with our online communities. But there is also a high value in deepening the relationships with genuine glimpses of life.

That Which Makes Me Stronger

So the day ends with me and my new friend, a kidney stone, working out our separation from one another. Painful? Yes. But not life threatening.

And I gained more than just my new friend Mr. Stone today. I was reminded of the best in people, online and off. I am always thankful for that.