JitterJam® Social CRM

Data from JitterJam Social CRM Platform - Click to Enlarge

I’m sure you’ve read the news by now. On Tuesday, Meltwater Group announced its acquisition of JitterJam. TechCrunch reported the news, and the social space went wild!

In fact, JitterJam garnered over 5.6 million brand impressions over social networks on Tuesday. The vast majority of those impressions were not from our own social sharing; they were from people sharing the news out to their contacts and spreading virally. Now that’s what I call Buzz!

Speaking of Buzz, the entire JitterJam team is now a part of the Meltwater Buzz team. We’re happy to be a part of such a strong, global company, and we’re looking forward to being a part of the growth and success of Meltwater Group.

However, on this Fun Stuff Friday, we’re also celebrating what we have accomplished. We took an idea derived from the feedback of the customers of our original platform, JitterGram (mobile advertising), and went from idea to launch to acquisition in a little over 18 months.

Now that’s something worth raising a glass (or three) to.

Happy Fun Stuff Friday, everyone. And thank you for all the generous support and encouragement you gave us along the way.

The JitterJam (now Meltwater Buzz) Crew + Happy Investor

We’ve all been there. The social newbie. “What’s this Twitter thing?” “Do you Facebook?”

I’m addicted to social media. Seriously. I love Twitter and Facebook. I love to see what people are doing. I love it when a long-lost friend discovers me and sends me a friend request. I love just having a glimpse into a long-distance friend’s daily life with the ability to participate. It’s brilliant.

It’s really interesting and fun to watch someone new to social media go through the stages of adoption. For instance, my husband wasn’t particularly interested in joining any social network until he found out that his family was quickly adopting Facebook. Once he got on, he discovered old friends and acquaintances. He even reconnected with some long-lost relatives that found him through his family network. A couple of weeks ago, one of his distant cousins posted a very old picture of his father and his father’s siblings in their youth. We downloaded the picture, uploaded it to a local drugstore’s photo portal, printed it, framed it on the spot and delivered it to his father that day. I’d say that the value of the social network proved itself in just that one act of discovery and sharing.

While he was a Facebook convert, Twitter was this elusive THING that he just didn’t get. I tweet. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. I keep track of a ton of topics from social media to Dachshunds, and I find new people that are as passionate about these interests as I am. He didn’t get why I would do all of this. Do I really care that someone I don’t know posted a picture of their dog? Why, yes I do. But just the other day, he was at an industry conference where a speaker related a story about the power of Twitter and the “loose” connection of people. The speaker gave an example of the need to reference a presentation and paper for one of his upcoming talks. He was unable to find the information after numerous Google searches. He then tweeted about it. Within minutes, he had the reference link. He explained that the loose connections of people led to someone who had the answer. His close connections (friends, colleagues) were unable to supply him what he needed, but their very loose, unstructured connections (within their extended and unknown community) picked up on the conversation and found the data.

That one example lit the bulb over my husband’s head. And I think this happens many many times a day. One thing or another may draw someone into joining a social network, but a concrete example of personal value turns a newbie into a convert.

Life, as we know it, has changed for good.

Happy Fun Stuff Friday, everyone.

Sometimes business travel can be fun.

Take, for example, my trip to San Francisco this week. It has been a blast. I’ve eaten every ethnicity of food that I have been missing since moving to New Hampshire. I’ve had the Ginger and Scallion Crab at R & G Lounge. I savored the Hotate (scallop) sushi at two restaurants, including one of my old favorites, Sushi Sam’s. I devoured the “world famous” Swedish pancakes at Sears Fine Foods, but I couldn’t finish an incredibly tasty and large Broiled Sea Bass with Roasted Garlic Beurre Blanc at John’s Grill (it was written in as one of the settings in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon). I’ve ridden a Cable Car (the first time since I was a teenager in the Bay Area), strolled through Fisherman’s Wharf and sipped the original Irish Coffee at the Buena Vista.

Strolling through downtown San Francisco is a treat. From the boutiques around Union Square to the smells and sights of North Beach, from the beauty of the Bay from the Embarcadero to the view from Nob Hill…I carved out a little bit of time to enjoy the city of my childhood on this particular business trip. While there were intense and productive days of meetings and discussions, I was very surprised to find that this trip has been a bit of a recharge for me; I haven’t been back to the area since I moved to New Hampshire two years ago. It hasn’t hurt that today was a quite balmy 69 degrees. After the cold and snowy winter in New Hampshire, shedding my L.L. Bean coat has been a true pleasure.

Now why did I move to New Hampshire again?

Thanks for the Fun Stuff Friday, San Francisco. I hope to be back soon!

I can’t believe it. It is 57 degrees outside right now. In New Hampshire. In February.

From the peanut gallery: “We need fresh powder.”

Um. Not me. I love the melt.

It makes me so happy to see the melt water flow across the parking lot. It has been a hard-fought winter, complete with 5-foot icicles cascading off of the eaves of my home. Now, we have a clear sign (outside of Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction) that Spring is just around the corner. And I couldn’t be happier.

I hope this is the end of our cold, snowy winter. My California bones are aching for some warm sunshine!

Happy Friday everyone!

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

We’ve talked a lot about the strategy and implementation of social media and social marketing. Different types of businesses can have different goals, approaches and strategies for social marketing, and this series of discussions center round how different vertical markets and businesses can use social marketing to their best advantage.

The first discussion in this series focuses on Social Marketing for Restaurants. From local favorites to national chains, restaurants are harnessing the power of social media to get the word out about their unique value. From Yelp to Facebook, Twitter to Foursquare, Flickr and beyond, how can restaurants best utilize the vast opportunities of social sharing to prosper? How does social marketing fit into the restaurant’s mix?

Here are the ideas sparked by our discussion.

1. Restaurants are already focused on their local communities. Social is a natural exension.
• Local establishments thrive on engaging their local community, and social media is an extension of that established outreach. If a business has a culture of being a contributing member of its local community, then their move into social is a natural extension of their current activities.
• The community activities of a restaurant can be easily shared—and fostered—via social channels. A restaurant’s associations, charitable works, events and more should be shared socially. People connect with businesses on many levels, and knowing that a local business is giving back to the community that supports it…that helps people connect to the business on a much deeper level and fosters greater customer loyalty. Social is also a great way for a local business to announce and promote their local causes.
2. How can social media help a restaurant thrive and grow?
• Reaching new markets. Social media can help a restaurant reach a different target market. For instance, a fine dining restaurant that has traditionally drawn an older clientele can start using social media to reach a younger generation of diners.
• Drawing consumer mind share. Regular and engaging content via social channels enables an establishment to continue to remind its customers of what it has to offer. Regular brand impressions (including enticing new menus, specials, seasonal food, etc.) will keep a restaurant’s customers interested and prompt them to dine with the establishment more often.
• Social discovery. One core value of social channels is brand growth through “organic” sharing. Restaurants shouldn’t limit their social chatter to information about themselves. They should curate and share information, recipes, food knowledge, local events and more and share information they find through their social channels (e.g. retweet).
• Direct customer feedback & engagement. Interacting with customers directly enables a restaurant to elicit direct feedback from visitors and draw “fans” in closer to the brand. If there’s a negative feedback situation, restaurants can attempt to turn a negative experience into a positive customer service experience, and, perhaps, change an unhappy customer into a rabid advocate. Most consumers will respond to an attempt by the restaurant to make amends for a bad experience. The key is for the restaurant to not only respond to directed comments (e.g. phone call, email, Twitter DM) but also publicly shared comments on social channels.
3. On which social channels should restaurants concentrate their efforts?
• Facebook. Having a fan page is a great way for restaurants to start actively engaging their current customers. Facebook enables rich content sharing by both the restaurant and its fans and viral sharing simply by showing up in their fans’ news streams.
• Twitter. Twitter enables restaurants to search for and engage individuals by location, by profile information and by their social conversations. Finding and following new people who are talking about restaurants, food, wine and dining in a local area enables the restaurant to “lightly” touch new contacts and make them aware of the restaurant. If the contact follows back…that’s the first step towards a happy customer!
• Yelp, Trip Advisor and other travel/review sites. Yelp provides restaurants with a way to both connect with diners and to provide diners with incentives to visit their establishment. Trip Advisor Some restaurant owners are concerned that competitors might try to “play” the system and post negative comments about their establishments. Others are concerned that some of these sites try to extract advertising dollars in exchange for removing negative comments. However, many sites enable restaurants to curate relationship with diners.
• FourSquare, Gowalla and other location-based services. Location-based services enable restaurants to incent people to visit (e.g. reserved table or parking space for the Mayor, Ben & Jerry’s 3 scoops for $3 for checking in) but also allow the restaurant to interact with the customer when they are on the premises.
4. How should a restaurant integrate social into their marketing mix?
• Create a strategy. Integrate social into your overall marketing strategy. Define your goals and measurement for social media just as you would for your other channels. Since social media is an ever changing “moving target,” make sure you leave room to review, refine and experiment your approach and tactics as you learn.
• Cross-pollinate. Make sure to provide links to your social accounts through your email marketing newsletters, on menus, on signage, on the restaurant’s website, on advertising, etc. Make sure that you can enable customers to immediately connect with you through social channels while their on your property (posted connections via text, email, Twitter and Facebook links, etc.). Cross-pollinate your channels by announcing your email marketing newsletters, events, new menus, etc. on your social channels.
• Make it fun. Social channels enable you to engage with customers on a more informal basis. Use humor, share fun photos (and let your customers share their own), create fun contests and more creative methods to allow people to engage with you on a personal level.
• Plan for it and staff it. If you decide to engage in social marketing, make sure that you plan for the resources necessary to manage the effort. Social consumers don’t like being abandoned, and doing so will turn these current and potential customers off. Your social presence and image should mirror the experience of your restaurant.

 
As you can see, lots of great ideas and thoughts come out during our Creativity Coffee sessions. Our current series of discussions center around different vertical markets and how each can adopt and benefit from social marketing. Won’t you join us in the discussion? It’s free, and you can dial in if you can’t join us here in Bedford, NH!
 
Photo Credit: Mattox

This is our 50th Fun Stuff Friday post!

One year ago (tomorrow, in fact) we posted our first Fun Stuff Friday blog post. It seems like ages ago to me rather than just one year.

Milestones are fun. I like having places along the way where I can stop, look back, evaluate where I’ve been and review where I’m going. Goals should have milestones to ensure you’re on track. Personal milestones can be the hallmarks of success and satisfaction. But milestones don’t need to be tied to a measure of success; they can just be a stop along our way, a time to reflect, or a really good excuse for a party.

We use milestones at work to measure progress, to motivate people and reward them for their accomplishments, and to mark significant change. I think that whenever possible, we need to celebrate what we’ve done and thank those around us that helped us get here. We’ve written 50 blog posts about Fun Stuff in the office and in our lives. I think that’s a great milestone, and I look forward to the next 50!

So to mark my 50th post, I’d like to thank Dave (yes, you Dave!) for his ever-patient support as I grumble about html and CSS, drive him crazy about Java script and PHP errors, and generally become a pain in the…you know…when I post to and update this blog and this site. (Don’t kill me Dave. Please?)

Is it time for our official Fun Stuff Friday beer bash yet? I hope so. We certainly have a lot to celebrate!
 
“Fifty” Photo Credit: Berkeley

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

The eighth (and final) use case in this series of discussions is Community Development. In our prior discussions, we talked about how social media opens the door not just for “media impressions” (aka Building Brand Awareness) but direct engagement with consumers. In this discussion, we talked about the new “community.” In the past, a brand’s direct consumer engagement was either initiated by the consumer, required the business to create their own hosted community, or was held behind closed doors (e.g. focus group). Community Development was focused on brand-hosted, closed communities that were only focused on the brand’s products and were often centered around customer support.

Today’s social networks are enabling organic and user-generated virtual communities to flourish. The word “community” may just mean a common thread amongst individuals—a conversation, a linkage, or an organic group like a Twitter list—and thus much harder for brands to identify, participate in and benefit from. How can they find these communities? What are the ways that they can engage consumers within those communities? What are the rules of engagement?

Here are the ideas sparked from the discussion.

1. How have communities evolved?
• Communities used to be focused on formal organizations on a local and national level. Before online communities existed, organizations formed on a local (and eventually grew to a national) level to bring people of like minds and interests together. The goal was to promote networking, education, and common interests and commerce. Trade organizations were the most prevalent, but interest-based organizations of all kinds formed.
• The online world expanded the breadth of interest-based communities. The online world enabled communities of all kinds to form and for people from all over the globe to participate on a local, national and global basis. “Community” no longer pertained to professional or trade organizations; community could now be people with common interests connecting with one another.
• Social networks have changed the notion of community. New, organic communities with both loose and tight ties have formed due to the growing prevalence of social networks. People are finding others with the same interests just through the content and conversations they share and post, and brands have the same opportunity to search for, find and engage these organic communities as a member of those communities.
2. How do businesses find these “organic” communities?
• It starts with search. Example: A dog food company looking for Dachshund owners for their special Dachshund food. The company can do a search (e.g. Twitter search, Google search) on the word “Dachshund” and start to evaluate the shared content, the crowd, the degrees of engagement, and the links and figure out where and how to start engaging the community.
• Many communities are very loosely organized. The threads of an online community may just be conversations. The definition of social community may just be people who share the same interests. That community may be linked by a single conversation, and the community might grow, change and even appear or disappear based upon current conversations. However, a brand can pick any point in time and find those community members with that common interest or thread and start following that thread for the people participating in the conversation, linked to the people talking, looking at blogs/websites/content that show a common interest, etc. These are the threads that bind these organic communities and a way for brands to find those who are participating.
3. Why do people seek online communities?
• Affinity. Finding others with a common interest to share common experiences. Finding people like you.
• Support. Finding information, answers, solutions or just comfort and assistance from others who have experienced the same situation, have the same problem (e.g. Intervertebral Disc Disorder in Dachshunds, repair diagnosis and parts for a vintage Mercedes).
• Information. Share or gain information on a specific subject or topic of interest.
• Ego. “I become the expert. People look to me as an authority.”
• Personal satisfaction. There’s an interest in contributing in a community for personal satisfaction; giving back to others; making connections with people; bridging a knowledge gap. Of course, even though a person is a member of a community, there are levels of engagement like the levels described in Charlene Li’s Book Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead (illustration to the right).
4. What are the “Golden Rules” for any business joining online communities?
• Contribute. Organic online communities are about common interests. Contribute to those communities with genuine, valuable insight, content and comments. Don’t let your membership in that community be about YOU.
• Be unselfish. Share information. Share experiences. Share content.
• ROI should not be your immediate goal. ROI should not be an immediate goal. Join the community without that expectation.
• Be genuine. People with passion about the subject matter should be driving the community membership. Fake interest in a community will show through. Be genuine and real.
• Be appropriate. Show that you GET the consumer.
• Build trust. Your participation in that community is the first step to building a trusted relationship with these new contacts. Once you start tooting your commercial horn, you can easily destroy that trust.
5. Online communities are not ALWAYS the answer.
• Online fallacy. Note that a brand can’t make the assumption that their community is online. The community is out there…just not always online and on social networks! It’s very market dependent.
• B2B vs. B2C communities. There’s a significant difference (e.g. HVAC business vs. Dachshund owners). What’s clear is that the people who join communities are generally passionate about the subject or interest, but that passion and level of engagement vary in intensity. There are also natural leaders that emerge…the influencers in a group.

 
As you can see, lots of great ideas and thoughts come out during our Creativity Coffee sessions. Our next series of discussions will center around different vertical markets and how each can adopt and benefit from social marketing. Won’t you join us in the discussion?
 
Photo Credit: biewoef

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

The seventh use case in our series is Product Development & Innovation. In our prior discussions, we talked about how social media opens the door not just for “media impressions” (aka Building Brand Awareness) but direct engagement with consumers. In this discussion, we talked about one of the advantages of this direct engagement—the ability for brands to generate new product and enhancement ideas from their customers. Listening to customer feedback AND engaging consumers to provide ideas and input to future product features and offerings—even crowdsourcing to develop or vote upon new product ideas—enables consumers to participate in the product launch process and enables brands to get early feedback and develop early advocacy from these engaged consumers. Here are the ideas sparked from the discussion.

1. Consumer beverage example.
• Through their product monitoring, they took a look at the brand mentions of the consumer beverage brand and the keywords that people used to describe their product experience. The keyword that kept coming up was “Protein.”
• They stuck the word “Protein” on the label and sales went up.
• Listening to consumer chatter to learn what consumers perceived was the value of the product helped the brand to tap into a new market need. What happened here wasn’t a product innovation per se, but a marketing shift to meet the perceived market need. The MARKET identified the value proposition, and the marketer tapped into that value prop through monitoring social media.
2. Avoiding the “marketing effect.”
• Companies have historically turned to focus groups and surveys to get product ideas and feedback. However, being a part of a focus group or a survey has a conscious or unconscious impact on a subject’s answers and opinions. Controlled studies can provide valuable insight, but the “marketing effect” of these controlled environments may skew the results in a way that could skew the results favorably/unfavorably from true consumer opinion. In addition, people often self-select for focus groups; they WANT to provide strong opinions, and those opinions may not be representative of the general population.
• Social media allows brands to “listen” to the “true utterances” of consumers, unguided by their own questions or biases. By monitoring social channels, brands can see consumer’s spontaneous or unguided opinions and experiences about their products.
• However, are social consumers representative of the customer base as a whole? Does a company make a decision based upon just the social voices? Is the social consumer a target SEGMENT or representative of the customer base? How does the demographic of the target customer map to the demographic of the social consumer? Do they intersect? If you’re using social media to drive product innovation, does that feedback represent the entire buying public? These questions need serious discussion and evaluation to determine the fit between social feedback and overall market evaluation.
3. How are brands using social media for product development?
• Not many companies are doing it. We’re still in the early stages of this kind of brand monitoring and the integration of those results into product research.
• Gatorade’s Social Media “Mission Control” and Dell’s IdeaStorm are exceptions.
4. Product Development Use Cases.
• Listening for Feedback.Listening for feedback is the first step. Start listening for what people are talking about, how people are using our product, how they perceive the value of the product, what messages and keywords are buzzing (e.g. “Protein” in conjunction with a beverage).
• Marketing Messaging.Shift product messaging to match consumer preferences, discussions and use cases.
• Crowdsourcing.Get people to drive the design and specifics of a new product. Or even pre-pay for a new product based upon crowdsourced designs. Utilize crowdsourcing to vote for a favorite (e.g. Mountain Dew flavors).
5. What kind of consumer companies can benefit from these use cases?
• Airlines.Southwest was not charging for passenger luggage when the trend from the other major airlines was to begin charging for bags. “Bags Fly Free” shifted their marketing message (rather than policy) and turned into a huge consumer value proposition.
• Dominos/Food Service.Took consumer comments (e.g. “tastes like cardboard) and created an ad campaign to combat those misconceptions. Additionally, Dominos used a potentially damaging PR incident and launched their social campaigns to combat the potential PR headache. Their public transparency helped save the brand’s image.
• Everyone.Individual consumers have a voice today. One conversation can drive a brand’s message, and a brand can take a potentially damaging, negative comment and turn it into something hugely positive. (e.g. Wheat Thins “Crunch is Calling” takes tweets and drops a huge load of product in front of the consumer who tweeted)
6. How does the “social innovation” process happen in a company? How do companies develop the right processes to handle this innovation?
• Someone (usually a stake holder) within a company needs to see the value of this kind of new media “experiment” and prove its value.
• A company’s internal culture and processes have a deep impact on whether social innovation can occur within a company. Is the company receptive to new ideas? How do they process and internalize product feedback? Do they continually try to drive innovation?
• Lots of companies believe that social marketing = having a Twitter account or a Facebook fan page. There’s SO much more to it.
• Ease of implementation has a significant impact on social innovation. Southwest’s “Bags Fly Free” was a marketing campaign. It required no business process change. Mountain Dew’s flavor crowdsourcing was a huge campaign that impacted packaging, bottling, shelf space, media, etc. However, innovation can also come from within (Subway Five Dollar Footlong came from a single store).

 
As you can see, lots of great ideas and thoughts come out during our Creativity Coffee sessions. Won’t you join us in the discussion?
 
Photo Credit: 123dan321

Part I of II: Direct Engagement With a Twitter Contact

This is a “sister” blog post to Idea Spark: Social Marketing Use Case #4-Direct Customer Engagement & Feedback which answers the question, “Okay, so how do I actually do that in JitterJam?” Our Idea Spark blog posts are purposefully tool-neutral; they present best practices, engagement strategies and all types of, well, ideas! JitterJam Tips blog posts, on the other hand, are designed to help our clients transform concepts into practice and to show our prospects what is possible within the JitterJam platform.

Putting Engagement into Practice

Whether you are using or intend to use social media for building brand awareness, lead generation, customer service, sales promotions, or product engagement and feedback, the tactical steps are pretty much the same! Your numerous and effective JitterJam Social Searches should have plenty of relevant conversations streaming into the Listen•Engage area of JitterJam. It’s fantastic to see what people are saying about your brand, your company, your product(s) and your industry! There are tremendous benefits to having your corporate ear tuned to listen. But this post is about something deeper! To build relationships with the authors of these valuable nuggets, you’ll need to move into the engagement phase.

It’s at this point that you’ll have some decisions to make regarding the approach to use for an initial dialogue and subsequent engagement with these chatty consumers. Your approach will depend on your industry, your current use case for social media and the current perception and awareness of your brand among the community with which you hope to engage. We have a bunch of past blog posts (consolidated in the following list) that will help you settle on the approach that is best for you. Review these and then we’ll dive into the “How-to-do-it-in-JitterJam” stuff.

• Idea Spark: Starting a Dialogue With a Customer
• Idea Spark: Social Etiquette
• Idea Spark: Voice of the Brand Pt. 1—Who Is Talking?
• Idea Spark: Voice of the Brand Pt. 2: What is Your Brand’s Voice?
• Idea Spark: Social Communities

Your engagement tactics will depend on the channel on which a contact was discovered (Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, You Tube or a blog) and how much public social profile information JitterJam found for the contact you hope to engage with. The rest of this blog post is focused on engaging with contacts discovered on Twitter; Part II will cover the other channels.

How To Engage With a New Twitter Contact

A look at a few engagement scenarios …

1. Person-A tweeted that they tried your product and were happy with the results.
2. Person-B just checked in via Foursquare to one of your locations (and used Foursquare to tweet about it).
3. Person-C tweeted that he was looking for advice on selecting a product in the space where you compete!

Your response to each of these discovered Twitter “conversations” should probably be different. Let’s look at the response scenarios.

Responding to Person-A: Brand Mention
You know that Person-A tried your product and took the time to tweet about the positive experience. Because you know this, it is perfectly acceptable to follow Person-A on Twitter.

Using JitterJam:Click on the grey “birdie-bottom” icon near the profile information to start following someone new; the icon will turn blue to show that you’re now following them.

This is your first step of engagement. Following someone on Twitter will add that person into JitterJam’s intelligent contact database. Additionally, you’ll impress your brand presence onto this person when he/she is notified of their new follower (typically by email, depending on the individual’s Twitter settings). Depending on the social media approach you have settled upon, you might say nothing to the contact and let the Twitter ‘follow’ speak on its own or you might respond with a “Thanks” or another equally light-touch response… “Glad you enjoyed it!”, “Nice to hear, thanks for sharing”, etc. Your response over Twitter can also be a re-tweet of the conversation the contact authored about your brand, an @ mention or @ reply, or a Direct Message (DM) IF that person is already following you.

Using JitterJam: The image shows which icon to click depending on your desired action. The response actions available to you in JitterJam depend upon your relationship with the contact. If a response action is not available (e.g. you can’t DM a contact because they aren’t following you), the icon will not be visible.

The most common actions in this scenario are re-tweeting or sending an @ mention (or @ reply) message, both of which are public and therefore visible to some or all Twitter users. The contact made a public statement about your brand/company, and a public, light-touch response is a fine choice. However, if you surmise from reading this contact’s Twitter stream that he/she might be tentative about public engagement on social networks, a Twitter DM might be the better option. You can send a Twitter DM only if the contact is following you and the message is just between you and the contact; it is not visible to any other Twitter user. For more on the various Twitter messaging options, read our past post, Twitter: Mentions, DMs and Retweets (and When To Use Each).

Responding to Person-B: Foursquare Check In and Tweet
Person-B checked in (via Foursquare) at one of your locations and tweeted about it. It might be a bit presumptive to jump right into a dialog with this person and it might or might not be too bold to follow them on a first check-in. Again, this depends on a number of parameters and practices within your industry and the awareness/perception of your brand. However, if you add the contact to the JitterJam database without following them (by clicking on the Add to Database icon in the “Actions” column of Listen•Engage with two people as shown on the previous graphic), JitterJam will track all of their conversations that are picked up by your social searches and conversation topics; you’ll be able to see how often they check in, mention your product/brand/company, etc. Maybe you’ll decide to follow or initiate a dialogue with someone who has tweeted a check-in more than three (3) times. Your social practices are your decision; JitterJam makes it easy to apply them.

JitterJam Tip for Using Foursquare
Set up a social search to pull in all tweeted Foursquare check-ins for your business and assign these social search results to their own JitterJam Topic (e.g. “4Sq Checkins”). This way, by creating a new Contact Search (in Develop or Promote) you’ll be able to isolate all of your contacts who have checked in more than three times, more than five times, never … what ever threshold is right for you. With these contacts isolated you can follow them, apply a tag to them, or even reach out to kick off a dialog!

Responding to Person-C: Asking for Product Advice
It is pretty exciting to see the conversation from Person-C asking for advice on the best widget when you, in fact, sell the very best-darn widget around! However, make a good effort to temper your response so you don’t sound like a snake-oil salesman. Try something like, “I understand you are looking for widgets, ours might fit the bill – care for a demo?” Or, include the url to a review of your widget as you suggest that, “You might check this out: http://…“ Person-C was looking for some guidance; if your tweet provides that without a strong-arm approach it is likely to be well received.

What happens if a person is less than pleased with your company/brand?
This is certainly a possibility and something you should be prepared for. We have covered this topic in our Monitoring and Responding to High-Risk Conversations post. Most importantly, keep a level head and look upon about the situation with a 360-degree perspective.

What’s Next?
Since this post was quite Twitter-centric, I think it is important to point out other Twitter-specific posts we have for you to use as a resource. Here are five great ones … a post on each of The 5 C’s of Following People on Twitter: Customer, Credibility, Content, Community, Competition.

Part II of this topic will cover Direct Customer Engagement & Feedback over other social channels.

Ready to engage? Remember to step lightly and always be respectful.

The social web has provided everyone with the ability to voice their opinions—and be heard. The Obama administration took notice of the new media revolution the day that they took office, and they have continued their use of social and new media channels to not only promote their agenda but to foster personal engagement with people across the country. Since then, much of the political fight has been taken online, and people ARE paying attention.

Let’s take this week’s State of the Union address as an example. Did you watch the broadcast? In the past, that would have meant, “Did you watch the address on TV?” These days, that question could be refined to include “or online” as well.

But new media isn’t just limited to just watching the speech’s broadcast online. Did you follow or add to the conversation on Twitter and Facebook? Did you watch the live interview with the President on YouTube? Did you submit a question to the White House via Twitter or YouTube? Did you attend an online policy roundtable? Did you watch the Tea Party response online?

Acccording to a post on Mashable, Tweetbeat reported 400,000 tweets about the #SOTU with 100,000 of those tweets occurring during the first hour of the speech itself. Spending, healthcare and jobs were abuzz in Facebook status updates during the address.

Traditional media is being enhanced/augmented/supplanted/altered by new media, and people are flocking to social and online sources that map to their individual preferences for media consumption. New media channels are not only enabling rich content delivery (just look at Fast Company’s story on how digital media options enhanced the address), but also rich/individual content generation, personal engagement with the social audience, and individual social commentary.

The result is more information, conversation, debate, awareness and engagement in our political process. “Rock the Vote” is being supplanted by “Talk the Vote,” and the social generation is ready, willing and able to voice their opinions. It’s great that our leaders are listening. Are you talking?