Movements never end, and neither do communities

This video is a few months old, and the general argument one often made by both Spike Jones (@spikejones) and his former agency Brains on Fire, but I just came across it and it’s well worth the watch:

One of the best points made is this one (paraphrasing): A campaign is not a movement. A campaign has a start date and an end date – a movement never ends. However, I’d add one corollary: many campaigns these days seek to develop elements of a movement, by building or engaging with communities – and just like movements, communities don’t just end either. That’s a really critical point for marketers in all disciplines to grasp, as it carries profound implications for anyone involved in word of mouth, social media, or community marketing.

Most marketing campaigns these days – while unfortunately in no way planned out to spark “movements” – do include some kind of community-building efforts. These can be as shallow as attracting fans to a Facebook page or Twitter account, or as deep as actively engaging that passions of established and vocal groups, clubs, forums, and so on. If your campaign actually manages to resonate with people, communities of all size and stripes could start to form around it or the products, services, or brand it’s promoting.

These communities of fans, followers, advocates, and evangelists are paying attention and engaging with your efforts, responding to your prompts, sharing with their friends, and even co-opting the campaigns lingo, creative, and so on. The marketer’s dream situation, right?

Not if you then pull the rug out from under them three months later. As Spike notes, a marketing campaign has a defined lifespan – it launches, cycles through various stages, and then shuts down while the marketing team rolls onto the next big thing. But those communities that may have formed around your product or campaign live on, and if you simply walk away to go focus on the next big thing, you risk anger, disaffection, or outright backlash by the very people who just last week you counted as your most passionate fans.

Even if you’re not wholly adopting Spike’s message and investing the time and energy it takes to try and build a movement around your brand, every marketer needs to be aware that the social and community elements of their brand and campaigns will in many cases outlive the quarterly media spend. If your fans and advocates invest the time and emotion into what you put out there, simply shutting down and moving onto the next campaign could carry some seriously negative effects.

In short: If you’re marketing effort involves trying to reach out to or cultivate communities of fans, advocates (or even skeptics) – which it should in almost every case – you need to be prepared to do it well beyond the life of the campaign of the moment. Like it or not, you’re in it for the long haul.

The real power of Promoted Tweets

So Twitter finally launches a way to make some money. It’s like a shoe that’s been waiting to drop ever since the service went live and 140-character shareable minutia become the latest social communications rage.

I’m in general agreement with John Batelle – this is a measured, positive step for Twitter and I think one that, assuming brands don’t abuse it, will be received fairly well by reasonable users (I say *reasonable* meaning those who recognize that Twitter at some point had to build a revenue stream). To the extent that Twitter is learning from the evolution of Google’s insanely successful AdWords model, that can only help in the long run.

Batelle however also pointed out a huge potential risk: Twitter users have been conditioned to only see tweets from people they have deliberately followed show up in their stream. The new Promoted Tweets model marks a significant departure that shouldn’t be overlooked – if the tweets are viewed as excessively unwelcome intrusions, we could see significant blowback against brands who are labeled guilty abusers of them.

Now it’s true that with the “new” retweet functionality Twitter did begin to introduce unexpected faces into your tweet stream. It was a shock to many, myself included, when it appeared as if random people were popping up within your usual see of familiar avatars. Over time, I’d venture that most users have grown accustomed to the new retweets, and as such, the sanctity of your tweet stream being “only those I follow!” has already started to get torn down.

Back to how brands will use Promoted Tweets, and doing that in the “right” way. Twitter has been piloting the functionality with six selected brands, among them Virgin Atlantic, which means we already have an early use case study to review, courtesy of Mashable:

How Virgin is using promoted tweets is what’s most important – targeting only very specific search terms while attempting to respect the issue of intrusion I noted above:

Gale spoke strongly about Virgin America’s position around Promoted Tweets being about better engagement. She doesn’t see the paid-for-tweets as advertisements, but instead as opportunities to enhance the communication that they’re having with customers and followers.

To that effect the company is purposely burying their Promoted Tweets in nearly impossible to find search listings. By opting to select highly specific keywords Virgina American can assure that they will only be seen by Twitter searchers looking for something very specific. Gale describes the follower relationship as something sacred and one the company has no intention to disrupt. She says, “people have to really want the promotion to find the tweet.” (my emphasis added)

That, in my opinion, is the right attitude for brands to take when evaluating a Promoted Tweets campaign. Respect the follower relationship, and reserve your ad spend for deep searchers who display an explicit interest in something highly relevant to your ad. Avoid even the appearance of disruption no matter what. You do not want to be the first case study of a brand that got it wrong and pissed of 50,000 diehard Twitter users.

How all this shakes out over the coming months will be fascinating to see, as brands experiment with the new model and Twitter refines the functionality.

The Great Tweet Ad Debate

Ads in Twitter streams seems to be the hot topic du jour, brought into the tech mainstream most recently by a NY Times article “A Friend’s Tweet Could be an Ad,” referencing Twitter ad services such as Ad.ly and Likes.com.

To sum up the Times piece – there’s a ton of activity and opportunity for Twitter ads, alongside an equal dose of risk and uneasiness. Any time you find a communication channel that involves high volumes of messages and equally high volumes of opted-in followers of people they (in theory) trust or value, you’ll find ad folks salivating. You’ll also find people more than willing to dive in and take those ad dollars.

The uneasiness comes for both followers and tweeters – in a relationship implicitly built on trust and direct communication, do ads sour the mix?

After being quoted in the Times article saying he’d unfollow anyone who places ads in their Twitter streams, Robert Scoble weighed in again over the weekend with to clarify his stance:

In it I said I unfollow people who put ads in their Twitter stream. I should have been a little bit more clear. Putting ads in your stream, if you disclose them, won’t automatically get me to unfollow you, but it does cause me to look at the value I’m getting out of your stream.

My emphasis on “disclose” added, as I think that’s the key point, along with both volume and relevancy. Those three factors will determine whether I continue to follow someone who mixes ads with their normal tweets. Looking more closely:

1. Disclosure: This should be obvious. If you’re being paid to tweet something, let me know. Throw an #ad hashtag on the end, or lead with “AD”. Your choice, just be clear and consistent. Don’t open yourself up to the “paid duplicitous shill” accusations which plagued the introduction of paid blog posts a few years back.

2. Volume: Scoble recommends no more than 5% of your tweets should be ads; Likes.com is supposedly limiting their participants to no more than one ad every other day. The jury is definitely still out on this one, and it varies dramatically by the volume and frequency of your tweets, along with how commercial your Twitter stream is in the first place. Experiment, watch others you admire for how they do it, and listen to your followers. High twitter ad volume is the new spam – tread carefully.

3. Relevancy: If you’re known as an expert on books, limit your ads to book-related promotions. If your followers expect to hear your thoughts on gardening, don’t randomly spam them with ads on financial products, no matter how much they pay. Keep the ads relevant to your established expertise and the expectations of your followers.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of in-tweet ads – I largely agree with Scoble though and certainly won’t unfollow someone simply for mixing a few well disclosed and highly relevant ads in, but will quickly drop you if you start to reek of spam.

Andy Beal posted a survey for his readers on the topic, and it seems to reflect the same kind of ambivalence, with 45% “Yes”, 21% “No” and 34% “Not Sure” responses to his question of “Will you unfollow those that place ads in their tweets?” (as of the time of this post)

As for brands and agencies: Twitter ads are something I’d recommend any brand or agency tread *extremely* carefully around. You don’t want to be one of the first case studies on how NOT to do Twitter ads, no matter how much you crave being innovative. Maintain tight control over the volume, placement, and relevancy of the ads you place and who you place them with, and quickly reconsider any service or ad network who doesn’t play by those rules.