Your tweets are not being seen

Your tweets are not being seen by who you think they are. Specifically, any “reply” tweet, which starts with an @ symbol, followed by a person’s twitter handle, is not being seen by the majority of your followers.

It was a conversation with Rebecca Corliss, aka @repcor, after the presentation she did this past weekend at TQNYC (TwitterQueens Social Media boot camp), that spurred my memory of reading something within the last couple of months that Twitter was eliminating the feature that everyone has the potential to be sent “@ -reply” tweets. Now, it is limited to the circle of people you have as followers in common, something which you can not know using Twitter alone. (I’m guessing there are 3rd-party apps which can tell you this information, but I don’t know them offhand.)

Twitter USED to have an option where you could see “@”s from people you follow, even if you don’t follow the person “@”ed. Now that twitter has removed this feature, ANY TWEET THAT YOU START WITH AN @ SYMBOL WILL ONLY BE SENT TO THE TWITTERERS YOU BOTH HAVE IN COMMON.

Unfortunately, this eliminates one of the most delightful aspects of twitter, and that is to be able to “see into” the conversations your friends are having with other people. That’s the best way to find and follow more people who you respect or like.

The solution is to NEVER START ANY TWEET with an “@” symbol. Here are a few inelegant workarounds: “Hey @…” “Hi @…” “So, @…” and so forth. Of course ReTweets (RTs) already don’t start with an @ symbol, so they’re not affected. Here is some more info about this issue on the Social Support wiki.

If you don’t like this recent Twitter development, voice your opinion here, and perhaps @ev and @biz will take heed.

Is your CU part of the Twitterverse yet?

CU Times just published an excellent article on Credit Unions and Twitter that features yours truly. I heart CU Times, and have for many years!

And now for something completely different…

In a 180-degree break from the norm of information posted on this blog, I am announcing a brand new blog, called Wooing Your TQ. This blog is inspired by my having fallen in love with a TwitterQueen. What is a TwitterQueen you may be asking? TwitterQueens are professional women helping each other learn effective social media techniques to empower and support one another. Here’s how it all started. If you want to become a TwitterQueen, sign up at the TwitterQueen community. There is a gala inaugural event, being done in PodCamp style, in NYC on Saturday, June 27, 2009. But signups are limited to the first 60 people, so reserve your spot now!

And if you are a guy, yes, you are welcome to become a TwitterQueen too. But only if you are truly man enough. I am.

EverythingCU hits 1,000,000 mark

EverythingCU.com just hit the 1,000,000 mark for discussion messages viewed on the site since inception in 2001.

That’s a lot of message viewing, especially since EverythingCU is a closed community of less than 6900 credit union professionals. Just goes to show that us marketing-types like to “talk.”

In honor of this milestone, at Shawn Ward’s suggestion, here are ten of my favorite conversations, topics which would likely not find voice elsewhere:

Your Favorite Super Bowl commercial

You know you’re a marketer when…

The best ad you NEVER ran

The Bill Consolidation is here

The most outrageous ad you have ever run

Kick-ass daring names for companies and products

A love note on your special day

Proud to be a CU Lifer!

Credit Unions: Industry or Movement?

What does member-owned really mean anyway?

Announcing PlumWall

“It’s not about the CU story you tell your members — it’s all about the story your members tell themselves about doing business with your credit union.”
— Ron Shevlin, Aite Group, at BarCampBank NewEngland 4.5.08

There is something new on the EverythingCU home page, and in the navigation bars, called PlumWall.

“What the heck is a PlumWall, and what have you crazy EverythingCU people done now?” you may be asking yourself.

Here at EverythingCU, we’ve understood the power of testimonials for a long time. Heck, it’s the main reason we get out of bed every morning and continue to work to keep your community the amazingly neat and clean place that it continues to be.

Now we have harnessed the power of the web, World 2.0 and social media to allow CREDIT UNIONS and their MEMBERS to share the joy, power, and beauty that is the CREDIT UNION MOVEMENT with one another.

PlumWall enables you to easily upload your member stories and testimonials about your CU. We all know you have LOADS of them, especially loan officers who are literally changing people’s lives for the better. EVERY loan officer has at least three or four VERY special stories they keep on their office wall. Well, it’s time to bring them OUT IN THE PUBLIC for ALL TO SEE!

So check out PlumWall, and see if it’s a fit for YOUR CU’s web site.

Here’s a link to more info.

Here’s a sample of what it looks like, using EverythingCU as example

Here’s what your control panel will look like.

We know it’s not perfect out of the gate, and have room to improve it, but at least it’s a fresh start to make sharing member testimonials online really easy. Feel free to email me any questions, comments, or feedback, or call my cell phone any time at 413-535-0621! We’d love to set it up for you!

Tri-District CUs are the best

The fine Western New York CU’ers are having a great time learning about World 2.0 in Ellicottville, an adorable resort town in the Enchanted Mountains. I’ve got to ski here someday very soon! I guess I made a good case for CUs to get involved in social media in my morning keynote, since we had to have the back room opened to accommodate the overflow for this afternoon’s breakout session. And Mike Henry totally enjoyed his breakfast, as we can see from this photo!

Time to rethink Marketing 1.0 techniques

My new friend, and Amherst native, Ron Miller has graciously allowed me to be a guest author on his new blog, Social Media 101, which is co-created with Julie Roads.

I met Ron through mutual friend Tish Grier, who brought the two of us together, along with Ann Kingman, to be on a social media panel for the Hidden Tech group of Western Mass.

My guest post describes how those brought up in traditional marketing must adjust their mind-set in order to thrive in World 2.0.

It’s an honor to appear on Ron’s and Julie’s excellent new blog!

World 2.0 brings us to Pokagon

What is World 2.0? And why do I use this term to explain the new environment in which we live? The web, and in particular the new engagement known as social media, has fundamentally changed the way that we, as people and organizations, exist in the world. By connecting all of us together, we have a new layer of knowledge in addition to the physical world with which we are more familiar.

EverythingCU is going to hold unique event in Indiana on Friday, May 29. This event will be a success, and would not have been possible prior to World 2.0.

Personally, I have only been to Indiana a couple of times, and it was always either passing through on I-80/90, or visiting Indianapolis. I know very little about the rest of the state except that French Lick is where Larry Bird came from, and the Kiss Fan Club’s address was in Terre Haute.

Because the economy hit the skids recently, and our credit union clients were blind-sided, errrrrr assessed a heavy burden to their operating budgets in January, we decided to postpone our flagship event, the Triple-B, slated for Portsmouth NH, by one year, to October of 2010. In the meantime, I wanted to continue to bring great experiences and education to our colleagues, and knew this presented the opportunity to put into action an idea I’ve had for a while: hold smaller-scale events for our members in locations that are convenient to them.

EverythingCU’s COO, Matt Taggart, coined the term for this one-day event: Instead of the multi-day Triple-B, this one-day event is known as the Little-B.

Choosing the right location can be quite problematic for an online company with members throughout North America. My first order of business was to poll our members to find out where people are located who are interested in attending our event. I put the query out on EverythingCU. While we got responses from all parts of the US, there was a clear mandate coming from three states: Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. Since these three states border each other, my next step was to take a look at Google Maps and see what lay at the intersection of them. I immediately zeroed in on a place called Pokagon State Park, in the northeast corner of Indiana. Further googling of this area showed me that there were a couple of hotels nearby, even if the nearest major city was a 45-minute drive away in Fort Wayne. Also, using Google Maps, I could tell that this location was within driving range for many people. It’s two to three hours away from several major and minor cities: Detroit, Columbus, Indianapolis, Chicago, Fort Wayne, Lansing, and slightly farther from Cleveland and Cincinnati. Other cities include: Dayton, Toledo, South Bend, Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Gary, Saginaw, Battle Creek, and Essex, Ontario.

It’s not always easy to get a feel for a place simply by looking at a web site or three. So my next step was to get in touch with the people who live nearby, and I contacted a few EverythingCU site members in Fort Wayne. Not only did they confirm for me that was this indeed a great spot, but two told me that they have had great experiences at this park, and that the Potawatomi Inn in the park is a great hotel and conference space. Prior to speaking to our members, I had thought we’d have to hold the event at a hotel just outside the park, not realizing there was a great facility inside the park itself.

None of this would have been possible prior to World 2.0. There is no way that we could have had this direct contact with our membership to pull off an event in a place that we have never been to before. We have our agenda set, the invitations have been emailed and posted online, our members are signing up, and a great experience awaits us and our membership. A special thank you to Doug True, Chad Gramling and Nan Morrow who have spread the word to the Ignite Indiana group.

Now our challenge is to find another spot where this confluence of geography and member interest lies. I have several ideas and will be posting them inside the confines of EverythingCU.

Our agenda is set. We’ll be networking with each other (we’ll have many EverythingCU’ers who have never met each other in real life before), covering social media, sharpening our marketing skills with a presentation project, and sharing money-saving marketing techniques. If you are a credit union employee in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, or Ontario, I hope to see you at the 2009 Little-B Pokagon! If you have CU friends in the area, let them know!

Confessions of a reformed wallflower

When I was a kid, I was painfully shy. Those of you who have met me in person would probably not believe it, but it’s true.

When I met William Azaroff of Vancouver in Manchester, NH a couple of weeks ago to tour America’s CU Museum, and then later that same night went out for dinner and drinks with Matt Davis of North Carolina and Ron Shevlin in North Reading, MA, we discussed that one of the criticisms leveled at us “social media” types who attended and presented at the 2008 Partnership Symposium in Indianapolis was that we didn’t mingle with others. I hadn’t consciously realized that, but looking back, it was true. And I am sad about that.

And though there is no excuse for that, there is a reason for it, and l will explain and tie paragraph one to paragraph two. It’s human nature to greet friends warmly, and not to walk up to strangers to introduce yourself. I try to greet people at most opportunities, and say hi to those I pass in a hallway. When given a choice between giving a handshake or a hug to an old friend, and introducing yourself to a stranger, it’s human nature to greet a friend first, because that’s much easier.

And that’s the amazing thing about social media and social networking. Sometimes you give an especially hearty greeting to someone you are meeting in person for the first time if you have already gotten to know that person online. Because, as Ron Shevlin has pointed out, you can get to know, online, a person who lives 3,000 miles away better than your colleague down the hallway who isn’t online in any meaningful way. When you get together, you already “know” that person. Especially given the conversational nature of twitter, you probably know more than you ever wanted to know about them on a personal basis. When you meet, you don’t need to use small talk to find common interests, you just naturally pick up the conversation that you’ve already been having online, and will continue online later.

I remember my first PodCamp Boston experience; it was the second of the PodCamps that they have held. I missed the first day entirely, but arrived in time to catch the tail end of the official evening party. I met a couple of folks who I had connected with online previously, but felt very much the outsider. It seemed like everyone else already knew each other. Undaunted, I continued to meet people throughout the second day and learn more about what this social media thing was all about.

And so I write this blog post to encourage everyone who is a.) relatively new to social media, b.) naturally shy, or c.) both, to put aside that shyness and to do your best to overcome that feeling of being a social media “outsider” when you come upon a group of social media people hanging out with each other, such as that which occurred just two weekends ago at PodCamp WesternMass. Bear in mind that most people involved in the online social world are exactly that: fairly social. Please understand that although it’s human nature to hang out with friends that you already know, most of us involved in the field really WANT to meet new people. Sometimes we just need a nudge of encouragement.

Remember that everyone in the world of social media was an outsider at first. If you introduce yourself, the folks worth talking to will be more than glad to have met you.

Seven Thoughts from PodCamp

Seven: Everyone has a story. Every camper brings their own story to the table, and experiences the camp in their own unique way, with their own perspectives, goals and ambitions.

Six: Enable others to connect with each other. It turns out that AuctionWally enjoys Voodoo Steve’s indie podcast. How cool is that? And many folks were not familiar with Amherst native John Robison before the camp. But everyone in his session came away with newfound knowledge and respect.

Five: Help others build their networks. It’s not about the size of your own network, it’s about how many connections you can make for others. That’s why I put the ‘Follow Me on Twitter” poster sheets up on the wall; to enable campers to continue the conversations.

Four: The spirit of PodCamp can be found in the little things. One of my favorite photos is this one of laptop bags lined up against the wall.

Three: The spirit of PodCamp can be found in the spaces. Yes, the sessions are usually excellent. But I learned from BarCampBank SF how great it is to allow ample time between sessions and leave a huge long lunch break. This is what really allows campers to connect with each other, and many times it’s these break conversations where new things are shared and learned.

Two: The buzz spread more AFTERwards. For an inaugural event word spreads more AFTER the event. WesternMass has never had any sort of ‘camp’ event before as far as I know. So even though many invites went out, many did not see the value in re-arranging their schedules in order to attend. But now that we have 14 GLOWING blog reviews of the camp, interest is piqued in a wider audience. So we’ll hold version two in about six months. If you are considering trying to get any type of new event off the ground, make sure it is WELL RECORDED online the first time out.

One: Seeing the camp through others’ eyes. This is actually one of my greatest joys of PodCamp. Being a ‘camp veteran, I take the open discussion and flexible format for granted. But since so many bloggers, photographers, and videographers attended, I get to experience the joy and wonderment of their first camp experience through their lens.