Now, I had two things going through my mind at this point:

Did I warn people often enough of the pending excess of tweets flooding their streams? We did once at the beginning of each effort.

Were these events important enough to try to make the campaign a more relevant issue to our followers on Twitter and – hopefully – the city and the region? Considering recent voter turnout numbers in local elections, I thought it warranted some attention.

We received a positive response from the first evening’s coverage, including a mention from one of the city’s alternative weeklies since they couldn’t cover it themselves.

Last night’s event drew more support, but only after one of our stream followers made the following comment:

@bhamterminal guys. seriously. Twitter is not a chat room. I don’t need play by play of local city council meetings. unfollow in 3, 2, 1…

While I’m grateful for the encouraging words that I saw the account receive involving the use of Twitter in this instance, I started to wonder about the fact that even though folks don’t like to think of social media tools in marketing terms, it definitely behaves like one since its essentially an opt-in process.

I’d have to say that it’s better than a chat room – it’s a conversational engagement tool.

As a result, some folks use Twitter as a chat room (including the wildly popular #journchat on Monday nights and #blogchat on Sunday nights) while some use it as an informational stream – a fire hose of knowledge if you will.

The great thing about it is you can choose to drink from the hose whenever you want to. There have been additional tools out there to help shut off portions of the stream, including Twittersnooze (though it’s currently sleeping itself) and third party applications like Tweetdeck and Seesmic that allow the creation of groups. Twitter’s new Lists functionality even provides help with reducing the force of the flow. Of course, you can always choose to block, unfollow or unfriend a stream if it becomes too much for you. It will not be the end of the world and you may even figure out a way to re-engage in the conversation later on.

As for how we deal with moving the conversation off of Twitter and somewhere where it feels less like broadcasting… I have a few ideas, but I’ll wait to hear your suggestions down below first and then share them and mine later this week.

By the way – don’t be afraid of making mistakes when using Twitter or any digital communications tools.

It’s not failing – it’ll just help you in the long run.

Photo: Fire hydrant. mikbor/Flickr.

The room was comfortable, the front desk was extremely helpful and the breakfast attendants talked me into a full breakfast that was so good that it kept me satisfied practically all day Saturday.

Plus, it was one really comfortable bed (as you can see)…

While I was driving back, I couldn’t think of many things that could have made the stay even better – save one that would be a perk.

I thought about what it would be like if you were able to communicate with a hotel or inn directly using social media.

Hotels are already looking to tools like Twitter and Facebook to reach out to those of us out here in the virtual universe, but the tone of the conversation would need to be altered slightly.

Followers are currently able to find out about contests (that chains hope become viral – like the one that David Sullivan just won) or about special deals that are only they will be able to learn about. I’m hoping that eventually it will also make it possible for me to communicate with the desk about availability (if I’m a regular or business traveler) or be able to request the hotel shuttle come and pick me up in addition to helping with recommendations.

It wouldn’t be fair to ask for a change without pointing out the personal touches that using social media and search allows one Garden Court Inn to provide (thanks for the link, @SocialMediaComm).

Putting this question out via Twitter today pointed me in the direction of several sites that use that popular service to share information with their followers – but it is still in the early adoption stages as is all of this stuff. My adopted hometown of Savannah has a couple of entries in the race, including a profile for the DeSoto Hilton, the city’s tallest building, as well as the Hyatt along the waterfront. There are also several hotels using Facebook, including aloft, Hilton Garden Inn and Sheraton Hotels and Resorts among others, though many appear to be using as a broadcast vehicle and not necessarily one that builds relationships over the long term via a two-way conversation.

One reason to be optimistic about that interaction changing is Hyatt’s HyattConcierge account on Twitter. The profile has more than 7,800 followers and a quick look at recent tweets from it shows that it’s responding to people while making others aware of answers to questions that they may have. It also appears as though they probably have as much traffic occurring as direct messages to travelers as the open information stream. It’s just cool to think about what it would be like if several properties could get to that level of assistance for their guests.

A few things will need to change in order for this to spread across the industry. The accounts would need to be used by more than just  the marketing department. I know that managers are always worried about how their staff uses their time (I know I was when I managed), but the ability to have folks able to receive answers to questions like “What’s going on in town this weekend?” or “Is it possible to make reservations at (insert name of restaurant here)?” would be a treat for those following and probably a lot more fun for your front desk and concierge staff than you think.

Another issue involves getting that conversation online to be a two-way one and not just one of giveaways and contests. This would involve both sides of that conversation taking steps to truly change their behavior, including having questions asked and answered by other guests. That may take a little longer, but I still think that the results would be great.

I’d love have some of you share more examples of hotels and smaller properties using social media tools to enhance the guest’s stay.

Anybody?

Photo: HGI bed. André Natta

One of the things that New York’s transit authority – and other transit agencies – have gotten great at doing is selling all of the ad spaces available in a rail car to a single company (even if ad revenue has gone down in recent months). It probably seen as a great way to reinforce brand awareness by larger companies and organizations, especially if you’re averaging a couple million folks riding the system & seeing it every day.

This morning, my friend Brett and I ended up in a car that had advertising from Starbucks Coffee. It was extremely successful in doing one thing using print media that businesses using various social media tools seem to forget to do: saying “thank you.”

The entire car was covered with signs that thanked those folks who run in every morning and grab their cup of coffee from this entity for voting them #1. If you got on the train at Fordham Road and were on it until you got to Rockefeller Center, at some point you read a huge “thank you” card from a company to it’s fans for voting them #1. Some folks are calling it gloating, but businesses, as well as individuals – large and small, on Main Street or via their online presence – would be wise to take this page out of Starbucks’ playbook. There’s something about being thanked by someone or something. You feel as though you matter as an individual and that a company or a service is aware of how they got into that position.

I’d love to hear about some other examples that are out there of ways folks are saying “thank you” to their customers – both on and off-line…

…and thank you for reading!

Photo: Starbucks ad on the “B” train. acnatta/Flickr.

Blog authors assume that people are waiting with endless breath for your next thought or recommendation. The funny thing is, as much as consultants and gurus talk about social media being an engagement of our audience, most of how we use the tool is still relegated to following a long-standing interruption model of communicating with customers. The only difference now is the existence of a gate that allows the end user to control when that information gets to them and how they wish to respond.

While they can decide when to check our RSS feed, read the email with the latest headlines, check out what we’re doing on Facebook or visit Twitter’s website instead of using Seesmic Desktop, Nambu or Tweetdeck to follow their Tweeps, when they finally see our message, are we inviting them into a conversation…

“How was your weekend?”
“What did you like best about the performance?”

…or are we simply broadcasting information?

“Be (insert place) at (insert time) for (insert event).”
“Check out our latest sale at (insert URL here).”

Yes, we’ve given others permission to contact us, but for many, it means that they assume you will respond immediately for their convenience instead of realizing that many of these tools are supposed to make life easier for us (the end user) allowing us to answer when we can. The rumors of the demise of interruption marketing have been greatly exaggerated as a result.

For many, the use of social media tools in business is a way to collect leads. Folks should not necessarily deny that this is the case. I may still be naive, but talking with your followers or checking their pulse with questions every once in a while may lead to more followers in the long run.

I’ve become guilty of broadcasting myself recently with most of the social media tools I use for my hyperlocal blog. While there are no hard and fast rules in this virtual Wild Wild West of the Web, I’d argue that you’d rather have folks speaking positively about your brand or experience freely instead of needing to rely soley on triggers, physical or otherwise, to move them towards doing it.

This isn’t to say that we don’t ever need to be making broadcasting announcements in the Web 2.0 world. I’m just suggesting that if you do, you may want to make sure that folks know there’s a real person behind the scenes. They’ll probably be more willing to pardon the interruption and become more engaged with you and your brand. After all, we want that lead to develop into a relationship with the brand or service, don’t we?

Photo: Interruption. decade_null/Flickr

Part of the issue is that these tools are being used by all types of people, all seeking different results. As a result, you’ve got people (including myself) looking at the virtual world through different lenses saying that you must do this or that to be effective.

I’ll share my own #1 rule  – You must engage.

I came up with this rule because I figured that it was the broadest but most important thing to remember about being social. It does no good to gather all of this information if you don’t use it or talk about it with others.

Sometimes the engagement will take place online;  other times via email after someone has read your blog post. There will be times that you will never know if what you shared sparked a discussion because it did not take place online, but shouldn’t it be sufficient enough to know it could have happened?

Perhaps people need to stop being so nit picky about how some suggest using the tools and just dig in. We must decide exactly what we want out of our use of social media and set our own rules of engagement based on those goals, taking suggestions from anyone with a grain of salt.

In the case of those who find this blog, I hope it means looking at the needs of the nonprofit or community revitalization effort you’re involved in and figuring out just how all of these social media tools can help you and then doing it, sharing and engaging along the way.

What do you think?

Photo: Pool Rules. Joe Shlabotnik/Flickr

It’s a lesson that we’ve been taught and reminded about forever – our first instinct should be to listen to what’s going on around us and not necessarily to assume what you’re going to hear as the answer.

Many people get into business because they listened to a need in their community and they decided they would try to fill it. I’m sure that many of us would admit that those businesses that continue to listen to their clientele and react effectively to what they hear are the ones that are most successful. I would comb over comment cards from my days managing an inn hoping that I could improve the quality of service based on what those who took the time to fill out the cards had to say. Well, nowadays listening means not just paying attention to the words on the comment card in your hand but to the words shared on blogs, Facebook and Yelp to name only a few outlets in the virtual world. (We’ll take a look at them and others as we go along).

One thing to keep in mind before hanging your shingle out in the world of social media is that you want to hang out at some of the outposts and do some listening, either about yourself or other comparable businesses. You may find that what you think is the necessary need is only part of the problem or not even the problem at all. You may also find some ways to solve those problems effectively without spinning your wheels.

Amber Naslund‘s e-book provides essential information for those businesses that are attempting to step off the ledge and those lessons and suggestions can easily be applied to non profits and governments. Listen and, once you’re comfortable, be prepared to answer on that stage. People are said to be looking for transparency in their government nowadays. That transparency includes being able to interact with them at every level and in as many ways as possible. The best way to do that is to take a moment each day and be all ears (and every once in a while enjoy the silence when it happens).

Photo: The bar’s jumping at Local 44. acnatta/Flickr