Web Business by Ken Burbary

Twitter Bots usage steadily growing

I love Twitter. Why? Quite simply, because of the amazing community of helpful, knowledgeable, and diverse people around Twitter. I’ve already met many interesting individuals, both on and offline, because we all participate in the Twitter community. And Twitter keeps getting better through innovation from the community. There is a growing trend here, the use of Twitter bots.

What are Twitter Bots? They are special Twitter accounts that perform a special function and provides you with useful information. Twitter bots come in 2 basic flavors:

1) Push Bots - These bots don’t do anything fancy. Once you start to follow them, they broadcast messages to you. The most common uses of push bots to date have been by sports teams (for scoring updates) and weather forecasts.

2) Pull Bots – These bots are more sophisticated than push bots. You can interact with them by using Direct Message commands. The features of pull bots greatly exceed push bots. Pull bots operate as micro-applications behind the scenes, processing commands from a Twitter user, doing some work and then sending the result/data back to the original user via a Direct Message.

A simple example is the Timer bot. It’s Twitters version of a personal reminder service. Here’s how it works:

• Follow Timer bot
• Send a direct message to timer like this “d timer 45 call mom’

The timer bot will save your request, wait 45 minutes before sending a direct message reminder back to your Twitter account that says ‘call mom’

Here is a list of some of the more popular Twitter Bots. If you have others you find useful, add them to the comments and I will update the list.

• gCal - Add Google Calendar events
• HappyTwitDay - Send Happy Birthday Wishes
• WineTweets - Share what you’re drinking with other wine lovers on Twitter (check this out @garyvee)
• TweetBeep - Track topics in Twitter and have them emailed to you
• Tipr - Tells you the amount you should leave for a tip when dining out

Social media thoughts of the day

To be an effective community professional, you need to walk the talk and use the tools

Google is not a search engine, it’s a reputation tracker

Sean scored high on search engine results for Microsoft Support after a bad story was on Digg.com

Admits there are many buzzwords, yet many forget to look at the bigger picture

Rather than focusing on the Techcrunch/Scoble “Shiny Diamond” to develop a social media strategy

The 5 P’s of Social Media: People, Places, Process, Platform, Patterns

Process is potentially the most important P –but often overlooked

There are more smarter people about your product outside of your company

It’s good and horrible news that it’s easy to publish. Many fractures due to lack of strategy.

Google is the enemy of brand loyalty, if I can find the answer to a question not on your corporate property

Most advocates and influencers are not
helping to help a brand, they are helping other users.

“Pay it forward” a good model and metaphor how a community works

Participation:

Impacts to busienss: Customer Service and Support, Sales and Marketing, Innovation and Product Development

You can’t own the message and the audience is going to change it on their own

Word of Mouth has been a key driver why people buy what they buy, now with access to information through social tools greatly impacts this

Engagement is about brand inclusion, making sure people have their voiced involved

We’ve all seen ugly babies but never had one. We’ve strong attraction to our own products. Uses a MS open source as a case study

Beta is not early enough to get your community involved

If you want raving fans, get affinity, talks about Harley Davidson

Influencer Framework in Web 1.0: Envision and develop, test and release, and sell and support

Suggests that social aspect of employees were only in sell and support aspect, not other areas

Sean had an executive champion, Steve Ballmer

Social graph: as a business strategy we should think about it as\

Notes from SAP Salon: Social Media and Online Communities

The POST method to Social Media Strategy