1. Genuine Celebrities (Be They Globally Famous or Merely Geeky)
2. The Rest of Us

We Have Different Expectations of Celebrities
Celebrities, such as Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Diddy, Martha Stewart, and even noted “tech celebrities” such as Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki, have a different experience than most of us, due to the number of people that want to follow them for various reasons or admiration. The Law of Reciprocity may or may not be used by celebs, but they attract plenty of attention anyway. You cannot compare yourself to them. When people find out they’re there, they often gain thousands of followers overnight.

The Rest of Us Are In a Popularity Game
People may not like it, but Twitter is as old-fashioned a popularity game as high school is, IF you want to use it to promote your business, products, services or special causes. It doesn’t matter if you have 50 followers, or 50,000, if you are a non-celebrity (remember, they are differently perceived than you), you will need to have some level of popularity amongst your friends and followers because you cannot extend the reach of your message without these people. By “being popular” I mean, you need to be liked and appreciated. This is not like traditional marketing – this is social marketing and being social requires a lot of interaction with other people. (Celebrities should pay attention to the rest of this article if they want their fans and followers to adore them beyond words. Acts of kindness by strangers are doubly appreciated when you admire the person already.)

This isn’t a magic “popularity” ingredient, nor can I ensure you’ll get followers by the droves if you take my advice. This IS however, a philosophical theory that can bring you benefits if you understand it and are able to take advantage of it in your self-promotional efforts.

I am not sharing this because I want everyone to think I have some super-sales twitter tactic for big-time business growth & thousands of followers or whatever the new crop of infamous “twitter marketers” are hawking. I follow lots of people, and I have seen (I think) virtually every kind of attempt to get followers and peddle one’s wares that exists. I see great businesses, big and small, that are sending out their info in an attempt to generate some interest in what they have to offer. And time and time again, I see some methods fail, or worse, suffer backlash from vocal users who like to point out shortcomings in others. I want to help those businesses understand how to use Twitter like I do (because after all, it works for me.)

Understanding The Law of Reciprocity
The simple way to describe the Law of Reciprocity is to equate it to The Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But most of us were taught that in grade school and it still doesn’t help us win friends and influence people on Twitter! The actual, mathematical theorem depicted at Wikipedia is no help at all (except for you super-smart-geeks!) and what I am talking about is not spiritual in nature, though many students of spirituality and “law of attraction” believers consider this an important aspect of the universal condition.

I have some diagrams here to help illustrate my point. Each little spot on the circles is a “topic” of conversation on Twitter.

What I see companies and self-employed people do on Twitter, all the time, is operate like this circle on the left. They tweet, retweet and link to only that information which specifically talks about their company, a company employee, or company news of some type.

They may be friendly, and branch out a little bit over time, but their circles of interest revolve only around their own product, services, company or cause. I don’t think many businesses realize how this is perceived by others – they don’t necessarily intend to be self-serving only, so this is not a criticism but a different point of view to consider.

Popular (non-celebrity) users, on the other hand, tweet, retweet and link to information of all sorts. If a follower announces they’re having a baby, have graduated college or are getting married, they often excitedly tweet congratulations. They share items of interest that they feel others might like, even if they have no use for them. They participate sometimes in fun and silly games like #FollowFriday (where people make suggestions for people they recommend following) or #80sPhotoWeekend (wherein some of us risked ridicule by posting pics of ourselves that should have gone unseen.) They get into conversations that people are having, debating everything from the state of the economy to the controversial social practices to the best way to tweet. They share opinions, spread good and bad news, help new followers get on board and generally have a good time with the people in their Twitter stream.

“BUT @KrisColvin!!!” you might say, “I have no time for this! I am a busy business person who is all about business!” I hear you. I myself am neglecting about 12 other things simply to write this post. We are all busy. But this is NOT broadcast marketing. This is not a radio ad, tv spot, newspaper ad or direct mailer. This is social media marketing, and that takes the one thing we have even less of than we have money… it takes time.

I often refer to “pimping my friends” and have been told I’m an expert schmoozer… much of that is my particular, fairly social personality. I want to share information about the people, company and clients that I care about, but I know some folks don’t understand why they send me direct messages asking me to tweet something, and I ignore it. I do what I can, but can’t really tweet things out I have no relation to, sympathy for, understand or would use without seeming, rightfully so, fake. I try to share what I know about in line with the things people know I am interested in, mostly and just remain true to my character about it.

I recommend using Twitalyzer to find out where you stand in terms of being generous with others. If you enter my name, you’ll see I am not scoring very high on “Generosity” because I don’t retweet things as much as others do. Yet, many of my followers perceive me as generous, because they’ve witnessed me trying to help someone else. We all have our own ways of being helpful, but this information is good for me to know because I do in fact, read more links sent out than I retweet. I should step it up a bit and share those more. Seeing me help someone else, or retweet something for someone, creates the goodwill of the Law of Reciprocity – whether I have helped the person observing this or not. This is good to know, but this is where the Law also gets a bit complex. Coach John Agno explains it well at his site:

The law of reciprocity is not what can best be described as “transactional reciprocity.” Baker says that, “Many people conceive of their business dealings as spot market exchanges–value given for value received, period. Nothing more, nothing less. This tit-for-tat mode of operation can produce success, but it doesn’t invoke the power of reciprocity and so fails to yield extraordinary success.”

Baker explains, ”The lesson is that we cannot pursue the power of reciprocity. When we try to invoke reciprocity directly, we lose sight of the reason for it: helping others. Paradoxically, it is in helping others without expecting reciprocity in return that we invoke the power of reciprocity. The path to reciprocity is indirect: reciprocity ensues from the social capital built by making contributions to others.

The deliberate pursuit of reciprocity fails, just like the pursuit of happiness. Acts of contribution, big and small, build your fund of social capital, creating a vast network of reciprocity. And so those who help you may not be those you help. The help you receive may come from distant corners of your network.”

In reality, understanding how these dynamics work is just the first part of the challenge. We must genuinely like people to benefit from social media, because if you like someone, your intention is naturally more reciprocal and less self-serving. If you have a bit of an introverted or anti-social personality, this may be hard. If you are very intellectual and suffer from an intolerance of small talk, even harder. It might be a good idea to enroll someone to help you and to tweet on behalf of your business if this is the case. Your spouse, best friend or loyal employee might be able to do a better job than you may with this technology and new way of marketing. Empower them not just to “toe the company line” but to BE social… to chit-chat, to talk about random thing, to share the good news, links and informations shared by others, and to show their unique personalities online.

It is not when you are focused on the Law of Reciprocity that it will work for you – it’s when you’re not. I have literally gone on a mini-Facebook rant and moments later received a direct message from a prospective client wanting to know if Fresh ID does social media optimization. I worry about some of the things I tweet because I am highly opinonated, but not too much. Everyday, people both follow me and unfollow me. Focus on getting to know the people who have done you the honor of following you BEFORE talking about your business.

Rather than trying too hard to promote your business, mention it when something appropriate comes up. Talk naturally about your day (a benefit of frequent tweeting) and that will include aspects of your work. Share advice when you see questions. When a need that has to do with your industry is mentioned, you might be the first expert someone thinks of, and you will now be familiar to them so their recommendation will go to you. That’s how it works. It’s not a “tactic”, not a “strategy”, but you, being normal, with strangers in a social space just like you would at a party or public event. But for the Law of Reciprocity to work you have to let go of the controls and rules about how you use this medium.

Scott Stratten, aka @unmarketing on Twitter, has a great mantra that people love to share when they see it, that sum up this advice in less than 140 characters. It is:

The Five Steps of Twitter Success: Follow, Reply, Retweet, Share, Repeat

As per my habit, I want to break these down and go into some detail, because a lot of businesses may feel they are doing this already, and don’t understand why it’s not working.

Follow LOTS of people with varying interests… not just the folks that you think will buy what you’re selling.

Reply to anything you see that you have an answer in your head for (within reason.) People LOVE to be acknowledged, and sometimes we put something out we think is funny or interesting or needed and it just falls flat. Reply to people often – it is the only way to truly get to know them and become friends.

Retweet things that both apply and don’t apply to you and your mission. If it seems beneficial to many folks, or it gave you a hearty laugh, those tweets are great candidates for retweets and have nothing to do with your business (but it promotes lots of goodwill!)

Share all kinds of information. If you pick up some things at lunch at the mall because there is an incredible sale, share that – let people know because it might help them too. I often share job information because I have a client in the industry, but mainly because thousands of people are desperate for jobs! I don’t retweet every single thing I see, or share it, but if there is a hot-button issue like that you can share about that helps others, don’t hesitate because it doesn’t seem “on-topic” for your purpose.

Repeat daily and be consistent. Don’t just login to Twitter to promote something and go away. Find the time to work it into your daily routine if you want to use Twitter as a self-promotional tool. How else do you expect people to find you? Twitter by far sends more people to my sites, blogs and information than any search engine or advertising ever has. That is probably because I talk a lot!

Questions? Comments? I’d love to hear them about this topic! I feel pretty sure that if more businesses did this, they would find Twitter to be a more pleasant and effective business tool, given enough time. What do you think?

Personal: A Stay-in-Contact Tool for Friends & Family
Like Facebook, instant messaging or texting a dear one on the phone, your purpose is to stay in touch with people intimately and you are not really looking to “grow a network” or find more people to follow. Your updates may be protected and this article is probably not of interest to you.

Functional: A Productivity or Utility Tool
You can use Twitter as a tool for doing business, as opposed to building business, in a number of ways:

1. Public Use: Customer Service
2. Public Use: Broadcast Information, such as blog feeds, job openings, PR feeds, news feeds, political information, stock & financial reports, etc. Many users are benefitting from the instant updating and like to follow broadcast-only accounts if the content is relevant to them.
3. Private Use: Inner-office communications, police or medical department communications, etc. (usually this necessitates protected updates and random followers are not sought out or approved)
4. Public or Private Use: Members only updates or business-to-consumer information such as using Twitter pings to look up information in a database (checking to see if the video store has the movie you want to see, placing to-go orders at a local restaurant, etc.)
5. Pulse: Information about real-time breaking news, weather events, global issues and hot topics.

Social: A Promotional & Networking Expansion Tool
Some folks love the companionship and chance to meet folks from around the world, so while they aren’t necessarily limiting themselves only to friends or family members, they really don’t have an agenda for using Twitter other than to meet new people and have a great time. Other meeting local friends, meeting someone to romance (more casual than match.com!) or finding people who share your interests, beliefs or hobbies.

One of the most powerful and popular ways to use Twitter is as a self-promotional vehicle, whether an individual, celebrity or company representative. The price is right, for all – it’s free! The learning curve is not steep, the only real downside seems to be the time it takes to add this into an already busy workday. Though a lot of individuals and companies are hearing about Twitter and setting up accounts (including celebrities of all types, politicians, athletes, news outlets and more), HOW to promote oneself in a way that attracts people rather than repels them, seems not to be understood by many, many people on Twitter.

When it’s not understood, any number of unattractive things can occur that can hurt your efforts:

• You offend people immediately after they follow you, by sending automated direct messages with self-interest-serving links (single easiest way to make a bad impression.)
• You annoy new followers with automated off-the-shelf promo messages created by the software you’re using (Join me on ping.fm, it’s like twitter for music!)
• You’re a celebrity who appears overly self-indulgent and non-friendly because though thousands of fans follow you (some of them more interested or genuinely fond of you than you know) the number of people you follow are in the single or double digits and you rarely @reply to people by name.
• You’re a company who only seems to care about promoting your products, your services, your press, or retweets information in which you are mentioned.
• You’re a company who thinks Twitter should be used as a broadcast tool, but don’t understand the circumstances in which people care about that, and mistakenly expect people on Twitter to jump on and follow you so you can blast them with self-promotion. When they don’t, you think Twitter is not all it’s cracked up to be.
• You actually think that putting up a photo of a hot babe wearing a skimpy outfit, and putting in a few updates of a link to something you are trying to sell is going to work to make you millions of dollars. When you get blocked or banned as a spammer, you don’t get what the problem is.
• You see the thousands upon millions of Twitter users as live targets for your sales pitches, and follow people simply to send them some great link for them to try out, check out or that will bring them great benefits. But because people can see through your self-serving interests, you come off as lame and there are a fair amount of outspoken people that bash you and try to get you thrown off Twitter.

Using Twitter as a promotional tool effectively can be challenging, but very rewarding. In my next post, I’ll show you how the Law of Reciprocity can change the way people perceive you, and help you create more openings to talk about your business with an ever-growing number of followers.

Some of the benefits of Lists are:

• You don’t have to follow people you have on a list, so brands like Starbucks or Verizon or whoever you need to interact with occasionally, don’t have to take up your main tweet stream… a HUGE benefit.
• Though many clients offer Groups, Twitter itself did not, so all the effort to put people into groups in an individual client did not translate to using another client – it was stored at the system level. Having Lists available via Twitter & the api means your sorted groups will always stay intact, regardless of the software you’re using.
• Lists can be shared and followed by others, so if you see a List you like that someone else created, you can follow it rather than recreate it… the disadvantage right now is that Twitter hasn’t made it so that you can add to, copy, consolidate or alter a List, meaning if you follow a great one and find an applicable user to add to it, you can’t (we will attempt to code around this in Twitterface so that you can.)
• There’s already an awesome directory set up where you can find and follow Lists… check it out at Listorious.com (I love Listorious so much, I’m hoping we can work with their team to integrate adding to the directory from Twitterface.)

Suffice it to say, this is one of the most exciting new features Twitter has implemented yet. In fact, The Next Web is reporting that Google searches indicate over 6.5 MILLION Twitter Lists have been created so far… and that’s with a gradual rollout to limited users the last two weeks in beta mode!

Not convinced of the benefit for you yet? Several users asked me to write about how Lists could help them from a business perspective. Here are some things you might do with this cool feature…

1. Create a list of your clients. I haven’t done this yet but am going to. We like to keep up with our clients tweets because we like them and want to stay in the loop about what they have going on. This is a super-fast way to do that.
2. Create a list of recommended vendors. A lot of folks have Twitter apps or tools Lists, but I decided to create a List of applications that I trust (including competitors to Twitterface) or that I use and would recommend. I don’t put a tool on this list without firsthand knowledge of the people behind it or interaction with them, so my followers or people who find it at Listorious will know it’s not a random smattering of tools, but one that I personally put thought into (if that matters to them.) Another purpose for do this is to help your own clients… if you’re a designer, you might assemble a list of recommended printers your clients can use to help them compare pricing or find special services.
3. List people from an article or book. Shel Israel has a neat list of people that were mentioned in his Twitterville book. This is a nice way to let people instantly follow all the people you’ve mentioned in a blog article (I’ll be creating a Twitter List of the 40 Amazing Female Role Models for Web Designers article I was recently mentioned in, for example.) This is a super way to extend the value of this type of article. (One caveat: you can only have 20 Lists per Twitter account, so you may need to think through this before planning to do a list for every article.)
4. Share your passions. Robert Scoble makes no apologies for his singular interest in tech geeks of all types – programmers, innovators, financiers, etc. His lists are awesome to follow but also worth studying from a strategic standpoint.
5. Stream topics. One of the ways Lists + Twitterface (when implemented) gets very interesting is that you can stream topics for your audience. Say you love a particular car or you share financial information and you have a Twitterface page on that topic. Instead of being limited to searches in your panes as a way to find tweets, you can now create a list of Twitter users (or bot reporters) that talk about those topics 24/7. The topical content you share with others now just increased in value. One thing I will do as soon as Lists is implemented in our product, is add all the pro Tennis players who tweet (there are many) to the 40 Love page. We will eventually have more than 3 panes, for even more real-time content streaming. This takes Lists out of your own personal Twitter experience (using Tweetdeck or whatever client you prefer) and lets you use it to add to your own site or blog content as a value for your visitors.
6. Stream sales and coupons. I don’t do any direct selling via Twitter, but there is the potential to set up Lists (and Twitterface pages) to stream deals constantly. Let me attempt to give an example, though this may not be the best one since I am not an affiliate marketer. We have a page for tweets on cheese with a domain pointed to it at www.cheesetweets.com. If I had affiliate accounts set up with different cheese sellers (there are many online stores that offer affiliate programs) I could make a list of multiple accounts or use a single account on a Twitterface page to stream these deals in addition to seeing random tweets about cheese eating and recipes. This is a non-intrusive way to advertise (no one has to be followed, because you promote and link to your topical page, so you aren’t bothering them with sales tweets they don’t want.)
7. Combine your own Twitter accounts into one List. Users may not want to follow all of your Twitter accounts personally, but might follow a List they can check when they want to. Depending on the content you deliver, it might make sense to combine many of your Twitter accounts into a single List. I’d love it if Whole Foods did this with all their accounts, for example (just because I’m a brand fan who would check it sometimes.) This could be a powerful internal way for employees to stay in the loop and connected also.
8. Create a List for coworkers, team members or contractors. Life flies by fast on Twitter. I continually check the Twitterface page for We Heart Studios and see things I had no idea my team has said. A List will make it much easier to keep up with the people who are a critical part of my business everyday.
9. Find job opportunities faster. If you’re hunting for a job, there are many sources on Twitter that do nothing but list jobs. Combine all of these into a List and focus your attention on just those postings to save time and prevent missing a great opportunity.
10. Assemble a list of referrals. I am definitely going to do this. When a new client or opportunity presents itself, have a handy list of people that are willing to be contacted for a referral source (ask them first.) This will be super-convenient for folks who do business on Twitter like I do.
11. Create a list of people you’ve met. LightThread CEO Simon Kuo created a neat list for himself of people he’s now met in person. If you’ve attended an awesome conference recently and want to remember all the folks you’ve met, you might create a list like Like Minds did for their Like Minds Alumni. Many lists exist for local friends or people in your area. (I’m on several for the Kansas City area.)
12. Define people by what they love. I will be creating a list of Nutella addicts. Why? Just because I can. And because there are LOTS of them! The trick will be seeing what we can do in Twitterface with the api’s so that I can someday take that list of Nutella freaks and isolate only their Nutella tweets. (Yum, in every way!!)

Now… there are some people who will be petty and complain that they want to be on more lists. Okay, probably that is just me. LOL! But seriously, we should not necessarily view lists as some indicator of influence or popularity or lack thereof… they are meant to be used for your needs as a Twitter user and not the new “Twitter follower scheme” opportunity. Sadly, I have already seen one tweet advertising a pyramid scheme to get you on more lists. This is not the best use of your time. Be interesting – show your unique personality and personal quirks – make lists that truly mean something to you and followers you care about and let the list mania chips fall where they may.

Here are some more articles to help you understand the fine details about Twitter Lists. My #1 request of Twitter would be that they add “consolidation” and allow you to rename a list as your own so you can continue to add people to it that appeal to you. There may be reasons they wouldn’t like that idea, but that’s the main interactivity complaint I have so far.

>> Twitter Lists are Live! (Mashable)

>> Scobleizer on Lists: Limitations, Bugs, Impact & Brilliance

>> Alex’s Footnote to Scobleizer’s Post

>> Twitter Expands Lists Beta. A Great New Feature

Questions, comments or more suggestions about how to use Lists, please leave them in the comments and let’s discuss. I’m loving this new feature – I was on the beta from the beginning, and can’t wait for everyone to catch up and begin creating their own unique lists.

Stephen Collins asks, at Social Media Today, “Is it brandjacking if you come in late and don’t ask nicely?” If someone takes a known brand name, for any reason, they are asking for consequences should the brand decide they care to pursue it. It’s never a good idea, and the very act of registering a social media account in a brand’s name that you have nothing to do with usually indicates one of two things: either an over-zealous fan wants to be associated with it, and talk about your brand with other enthusiasts, or a person wants to gain benefits undeserved… whether it’s to try to hold the name hostage, or simply be found via searches, or maybe they have a grudge and want people to find complaints when they search for the brand name.

Recent Twitter-celebs-gone-mad activities (Ashton Kutcher now has over a million followers, and the unthinkable happened, Oprah is now on Twitter) indicate that brands not already there, will be coming or at least looking to see that the brand name is available. So how should these companies and celebrities and branded products approach it if they come online to register, only to discover they have missed the opportunity to snag their own name?

This is going to sound wrong to a giant corporation used to dominating situations of brand theft, but this is how I would approach it in a social environment, to minimize your loss of reputation in the process:

PHASE ONE: ASK NICELY

1. Register an account under another name that is obviously your brand, and put a background, bio, url link and avatar up that provide proof of who you are.

2. Leak the word that you are on Twitter to some fan-base or group of followers because you will need followers if the person does not surrender the brand name easily. Begin tweeting in a friendly, personable, informative fashion to build some following quickly.

3. Follow the person with your registered brand name in an attempt to contact them via DM. Since Twitter doesn’t show email addresses this is the way to make initial contact.

4. If they don’t follow you back, tweet them and politely ask that they follow you so you can DM them.

5. If they follow you back, send them a DM that says you are now on Twitter and ask them to release your registered/trademarked/established brand name to them. Be willing to go back and forth, persuasively, in a few DM’s. If the person is a brand FAN your respect for them and understanding the psychology of brand pride they relate to is essential for keeping them a fan.

6. If they are willing to release the brand to you, it may be as simple as obtaining the password from them and taking it over.

PHASE TWO: MAKE IT PUBLIC

7. If they do not release your brand immediately and cooperatively, this is why you have followers… you should let your friends on Twitter know you are trying to obtain @yourbrandname and that they have refused to release it.

8. You shouldn’t bash the person too much because your followers are watching how you handle this – but some of your genuine fans likely will. Public humiliation is often the swiftest way to resolve a social injustice. (I hate to suggest this, but it’s true. I have been involved in at least 5-6 incidents of forcing an imposter to take down/change/alter what they have done using this vehicle.) Usually within a couple of hours of beginning a public outcry, you will obtain what you want.

PHASE THREE: GET OFFICIAL

9. If the stubborn little brandhijacker still refuses to budge, inform Twitter about the situation using a support ticket or the Get Satisfaction support website.

10. Contact your legal department and have them take over from here.

In the meantime, you are now on Twitter, so talk to your true fans and engage and interact with them! They will appreciate the way you attempted to handle the brand name theft nicely BEFORE contacting the legal department, and as a “friend” in the social media space, you will have earned extra credit for class and style.

Questions? Want to tell me I’m full of smack? Leave them in the comments.

Here are a few options:

1. GET TWITTER TO SHUT DOWN THE BAD GUYS, PRONTO

If there is inappropriate activity being conducted using your brand name, you must stop it immediately by any means necessary. Yesterday morning things came to a head with the KirtsyNews situation I recently wrote about. I noticed that there were even more followers on the account, and the pornographic tweets were increasing. I am not involved with Kirtsy in any way, but I became outraged because KirtsyNews was still allowed to have this account on Twitter. People from Kirtsy have told me they tried to get it shut down but nothing had happened yet. In the meantime, the Kirtsy brand was taking a hit everytime a porn tweet went out to the 4,000+ followers of the KirtsyNews account.

I submitted a help ticket at Twitter’s Get Satisfaction support site, and you can see the progress and process of getting KirtsyNews shut down here. The bottom line is, within a couple of hours of submitting the help ticket, the KirtsyNews account was suspended and we will hear from them no more. So this is one way to address issues of brand hijacking on Twitter. It should be noted that although I don’t know all the details, apparently Kirtsy had this issue before, and had to battle an imposter to get their current Kirtsy account. If you don’t already, you should follow them – they’re good people & have interesting things going on for women, especially, at kirtsy.com.

2. RECLAIM ACCOUNTS WITH YOUR BRAND NAME

My friends at Microblink have published a detailed article on getting your brand name released to you and away from an imposter or person, so I am going to ask that you go and read “How to Reclaim Registered or Inactive Twitter Accounts” for that information.

It’s important to understand the difference between an imposter and simply a person who has decided they like your brand name as a “handle”. An imposter sets themselves up so that people will believe they are dealing with your brand. This is what KirtsyNews did, though I don’t think they intended to send pornographic tweets out (that was a recent issue brought on by people behaving badly at the Kirtsy site.) The bio/avatar/company link, etc. all went to the Kirtsy site, so that is clearly an imposter (whether or not harm was intended.)

A “fan” will sometimes take your brand name out of enthusiasm, to form a community. If that is the case you have to weigh whether or not they should be shut down, or dealt with so that the intention is clear. A fan may also have complaints or deal with others who do, so the account name and information has to make it clear that they do not represent your company or brand. With fans, so that you don’t alienate them, I would recommend dealing with them directly and getting them to adjust wording or account names so that everything is represented properly.

And then there are the account hostage situations. Some of these are obvious – they want to sell you your account and Twitter will yank it immediately, from what I understand. Some of these make no sense – someone takes your brand name and just sits there, doing nothing with it. You can usually get these back, just follow the steps Microblink laid out.

3. PROTECT YOUR INTELLECTUAL BRAND PROPERTY – EVEN THE AD CAMPAIGNS

The world is filled with brainiacs that like to get attention. Recently several blog articles went up talking about Burger King sending a Cease & Desist notice via Twitter to someone who had registered the WhopperVirgins account. Microblink has an excellent, detailed article about the whole saga. I personally had been questioning TheBKLounge account, and wrote them on Twitter asking if they were the official account several days ago, but got no response. Their tweets, if studied, do not sound like something corporate marketing or public relations would do… they are far too casual and not focused on the promotion of Burger King.

So… from a brand management standpoint, and to pick on poor Burger King a moment more (just as a corporate example), where do they stand on Twitter? Here’s a breakdown of Burger King brand taxonomy in account names as of the end of 2008.

Held Hostage? (Perhaps)
http://twitter.com/burgerking
http://twitter.com/whopper 

Active Accounts/ Semi-Imposters
http://twitter.com/thebKlounge (semi-representative of company)
http://twitter.com/whoppervirgins (mystery individual who took latest ad campaign name) 

Not Registered (If I were Burger King, I would register these today!)
http://twitter.com/flamebroiled (product differentiator)
http://twitter.com/haveityourway (Burger King’s tagline)
http://twitter.com/croissanwich (Unique breakfast item)
http://twitter.com/whopperfreakout (previous ad campaign) 

Legitimate
http://twitter.com/bk (Used by real person with these initials BUT this is a key Burger King domain name, so a brand loss on Twitter)

The obvious question to me, is why on earth is Burger King choosing to ignore Twitter instead of taking advantage of FREE promotion and interacting with customers? In the last 24 hours, Twitter search reveals 14 pages worth of search results from people who have mentioned the words “Burger King” – this isn’t just today, this is every day, every week, every month, every year.

What are major brands waiting for? Twitter is not a fad, it’s growing, and brands/companies have a presence there whether you are designing it deliberately or not. If you are a company of any size, with product or service to sell or cause to promote, please think about this and then go and register at Twitter or ask me for help if you have concerns or are hesitant.

But Big Brands, run by Giant Corporations, have many other marketing and customer fires to put out in a day, and I think they are struggling to understand multiple concerns:

• Do I need to care about social networks?
• Do I have to be on social networks, and if so, which ones? There are so many!
• How can I manage my brand, if users and customers are doing the talking?
• Is it dangerous to let my employees hop on social networks and represent the company? What does it mean? What does Legal say?
• How can I find out what people are saying about my company and brands when there is so much “chatter” out there?

The reality of Twitter at this present time is that large corporations are tentative. Let’s do a quick check of my favorite brands listed above:

• http://twitter.com/Coke (or CocaCola; Coca-Cola – doesn’t appear to be the company)
• http://twitter.com/Jif (doesn’t appear to be the company)
• http://twitter.com/wholefoods (IS the company and is active, but they need to also register “@WholeFoodsMarket)
• http://twitter.com/target (doesn’t appear to be the company)
• http://twitter.com/archerfarms (account doesn’t exist)
• http://twitter.com/apple (doesn’t appear to be the company)
• http://twitter.com/macintosh (a person has taken it; person also has @mac)
• http://twitter.com/nike (doesn’t appear to be the company)
• http://twitter.com/adidas (doesn’t appear to be the company)
• http://twitter.com/anthropologie (doesn’t appear to be the company)

Out of all these products I purchase or stores I love to visit, only TWO, Whole Foods Market & Starbucks, have even made the effort to register accounts, put their product branding up, and interact with the millions of registered Twitter users that may find them there. (Those two brands are active on Twitter.)

So, what should Coke, Jif, Target, Apple, Nike, Adidas & Anthropologie do, now that their brand names have been registered by people that (it doesn’t appear) are associated with the company? These few examples are lucky – most of the accounts above have little activity. But yesterday an online company named Kirtsy was not so lucky.

Kirtsy, for those unfamiliar, is a great site geared toward women that, in their words “is just like that friend who always finds the best stuff. Only better.” Their Twitter site has 360+ followers and provides site updates, conference information and various nuggets the owner wants to impart. 

A brand hijacker has set up KirtsyNews, and has amassed a large following of over 3800 people, and until yesterday I don’t think anyone on Twitter knew this was not an account registered by the Kirtsy company. The reason why is that most of the links go to the Kirtsy site, and they have stolen images of the logo to use, plus the profile link points to the Kirtsy site. Kirtsy has been aware of the issue & raised the flag to Twitter support, I have been told by someone involved with the company. What raised the flag for the rest of us, was the sending of a completely inappropriate pornographic tweet, and now Kirtsy has to scramble harder to get them shut down.

I asked Brett Trout, Iowa patent attorney and author of Cyber Law: A Legal Arsenal for Online Business, if he knew what recourse a corporation has when someone assumes their brand name on a social site like Twitter, and he was kind enough to put together an article with some very good advice on this topic. Please do go and read Social Media Accountjacking so you don’t find yourself in a similar situation.

As a brand manager of sorts for many clients and employers, the idea of someone registering my brand name or holding it hostage is very troubling to me. It is so troubling, in fact, I am planning to write Twitterface terms of service that prevent someone from taking other people’s brands here, something that may take a bit of finesse, but I feel passionately enough about it to try to stop it here.

I am not sure of all the action Kirtsy has taken, but this is what I would consider doing now:

• Post a complaint at Twitter’s getsatisfaction.com support site and ask other users who care about my brand to chime in on the complaint so our voices will be heard & the complaint will be public.
• Follow every single one of the 3800+ followers that KirtsyNews has amassed, and send one message to each of them stating “KirtsyNews” is a fake account, and if they’d like to follow the REAL Kirtsy, to please do so.
• Send word to KirtsyNews via Twitter (if that is the only way they can reach them) that says they have X amount of days to close or turn over the account, before legal action is taken.

And then I would follow Brett Trout’s advice and get legal counsel and a letter of action prepared and find out how I could turn this into a PR opportunity in my favor.

Bottom line: Twitter’s growth is off the charts. Secure your brand names now!!

The company is fairly closed in terms of data, but growth is off the charts and companies should not only be aware of the site, they should lock up their accounts there, or take back brand names that have already been taken. Here’s one reason why. I’ll post more about specific steps a company can take to secure their brand on Twitter, even if they’re not ready to interact yet in that space.