Filmmaker | Broadcaster | Podcaster | Rogue

I find it pretty amazing that small business owners that know about Twitter don’t know how to use it to help make a difference in their business. 

Or don’t know that it can.

Citibank just got the results back from a study they commissioned where nearly two thirds of the people they polled said social networks like Twitter weren’t helpful at all. Now, as a film maker who has seen the sales of my most recent film, Six Reasons Why, hit some unexpected heights both in Canada and in the U.S. thanks to viral marketing and social networking, I’ve got to say there’s something wrong with these numbers. 

If the error isn’t in the polling question itself, then it’s in those business owners’ use of Twitter. And if it’s not there, then certainly in the tracking of Twitter-based results. The numbers are so low, it actually makes me wonder if the people polled even know that these networks can be used for business at all.

These business owners could definitely benefit from the Twitter marketing success stories of Moonfruit, Naked Pizza and Freshii. Naked Pizza and Freshii have been doing Twitter-only promotions to give away free toppings and add-ons to walk-in orders with great success, and Moonfruit even managed to become the top trending topic for weeks when they began giving away MacBooks on Twitter to increase their brand awareness. These are companies that have followers ranging from barely a thousand all the way up to 20,000+, so it’s obvious that an impact can be made with a reasonably humble number of followers as long as you’re putting effort in to attracting the right kind of follower.

As far as tracking results, I’ve got a couple of thousand followers these days, but it was at about the one-thousand follower point that I realized any time I posted a tweet with value and a link, at least one person would follow that link. These days, I can pretty much be guaranteed that YourGeekNews.com will get a decent surge in traffic if I tweet about a review of the most recent horror movie, like Paranormal Activity or offering an advanced look at a movie like Where The Wild Things Are. 

Ultimately, it’s about value to your follower. Give them something they want (whether that’s a free pizza topping or a free Macbook) and they’ll act on your tweet. Ideally, that transaction also gives you something you want. For you that may be a pizza order, a brand-building retweet or a hit to your website to watch a video.

As SMB get wise over the next few years to what corporations like Starbucks and McDonald’s already know, I’m sure Citibank will find their surveys will be looking quite different. Afterall, the playing field is quite level on Twitter right now. Just look at how many more followers America’s favourite coffee has compared to America’s favourite burger.

@MattCampagna

Humility is something that not everyone in the entertainment industry keeps an eye on, and while I was chatting with a journalist friend of mine last night, she mentioned that she thought I had done a good job staying gounded. That was news to me, but it made me think about the little things that go into making a movie, and how UNglamourous they are. Have you ever wondered exactly how fast the deeply-set lessons of human civilization can descend into debauchery, madness and utter savagery? As it turns out, about 38 hours is all it takes. Yes, that’s right, this is the videoblog of our misadventures on the way across the largest country in the world on the way to make Six Reasons Why. The sleeping in the car, the snow in May, the beef jerky, and of course, Mike Tattoo. Yes it’s all here. There really is no good way to sum up the road-trip of a lifetime with anything short of a video about the road-trip of a lifetime. So here it is, in all its lord-of-the-flies glory. And if this exercise in humility doesn’t do the job on me, I might just post a few more! 

Cross-posted from theWHIR.com

The most basic element of Twitter etiquette, once you get past your first 140 characters, is this whole business of following.Who is following you, who are you following, are you following everyone back, is everyone that you’re following following you back?

Believe it or not, how those numbers work out actually says a lot about you.

Take the founder of Digg, Kevin Rose, for example: with over 1,170,000 followers, he’s following back around 200 people, a lot of them are in his real-life social circle. He tweets about Digg, tea, and rock climbing, but he’s enough of a cewebrity to have over a million people follow him to hear his news, since you never know when he’ll be on Jimmy Fallon hocking social media to the masses. I follow him myself, but with a ratio of 1:6000, you can get the impression he’s pretty inaccessible over twitter.

A cewebrity who tries a bit harder to be accessible is Cali Lewis, the host of Geek Brief TV. With over 50,000 followers, she’s actually following back more than 4,000. A ratio of 1:12 is a valiant effort, but following more than a few hundred people is a tall order. Especially if you’re as super-busy and productive as Cali.

If you’re looking for perfect balance, then look no further than Guy Kawasaki. The man behind both Truemors and AllTop follows nearly as many people as follow him, ball-parking in the 170,000 range with almost a 1:1 ratio. He admits himself that there’s no way to follow a twitter stream of that many people. Kawasaki says that he follows everyone back so that he’s accessible to everybody via direct twitter message, which is a philosophy I subscribe to personally.

On the opposite end of cewebrity, if you’ve set up a new Twitter account and started off by following a few thousand people right off the bat, people might assume you’re a bot or a spammer. They’re pretty common on Twitter since Ellen and Oprah started Tweeting.

So my best recommendation is to never let your ratio get too “following-heavy”, lest you find yourself cast off as a bot and ignored by people you’d like to start a Twitter rapport with. Try adding no more than about a hundred people at a time when you go on a following-frenzy.

When it comes to your following Twetiquette, take a look at your personal or corporate brand, because you’ll want your follower ratio to reflect it.

@MattCampagna