Nice to see exposure of the hard work friends of i+a like Zena, Derek, and Justin. On a related note we had 50 or so people at this mornings SMCKC event. Wow, love seeing all the new faces.
“Businesses learn lessons in Twitter technology” (via KCStar.com)
By DIANE STAFFORD
When the Enterprise Center of Johnson County announced a “Twitter Bootcamp,” the seminar room capacity of two dozen was reached immediately.
The waiting list filled a second seminar set for later this month. And that waiting list precipitated a third seminar for May.
Representatives from large and small area businesses, eager to figure out how the social networking phenomenon can help their businesses, got an intro-to-tweeting lesson Thursday in the first of the three bootcamps.
Derek Gathright, Steven Chau and Darby Frey, three Web developers and software engineers, explained the Twittersphere, in which users are sending concise messages to each other’s cell phones, PDAs and desktops.
Twitter.com started out three years ago with some techies and other “early adopters” sending quick updates to one another — in answer to the signature question “What are you doing?”
Now, it has morphed into an advertising, marketing and public relations tool with perhaps 8 million users (though precise numbers aren’t known).
Southwest Airlines and JetBlue use Twitter. “It’s especially good at quieting angry customers,” Frey said. And Gathright described how Twitter helped him connect with lost luggage in Las Vegas.
Zicam, maker of a cold remedy, uses Twitter. Let someone send a message to a friend that says, “I’m sick,” and she may get a tweet in response that says, “Have you heard of Zicam?” along with an offer to download a coupon.
The seminar presenters said a couple of Kansas City companies have skilled Twitter users. They singled out Justin Gardner at AMC Theatres and Zena Weist at Embarq. They are among a relatively new class of worker known as the social media manager or interactive brand strategy manager.
Sprint Nextel also uses Twitter to scout out and help squash consumer complaints, the presenters said.
As a still-young medium for business, Twitter is being shaped by the preferences of its early adopters. For example, Chau said, the chief executive of Zappos, an online shoe vendor, tweets to share his views of the world, a technique that humanizes the company and builds a fan base.
Dell, the computer company, has a variety of Twitter accounts to reach users and prospective buyers. Gathright said the company had sales of more than $1 million in 2007-2008 generated through sale alerts sent on Twitter.
The three presenters said one of the clearest values of Twitter — as opposed to Facebook.com — is that a sender doesn’t have to be invited in or approved as a “friend” to receive a message.
That broader access has allowed CNN, for example, to account for comparatively high-volume Twitter traffic in news bulletin tweets.
But using Twitter isn’t a no-brainer, they said. They cited an effort by Skittles, the candy, to do a Twitter marketing push. Tweet traffic, presumably among young users, quickly became dotted with profanity and other less desirable stuff.
“With Twitter, you get instant feedback from users,” Gathright said, noting that can be good or bad. “You reach a much broader, random audience than using the more private e-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms or blogging.”
Before we get to the wrap up be sure to check out an Ideas and Angles exclusive interview mentioned on Entrepeneur.com. Nice to see another example of local companies being a part of the national discussion.
Friday morning showed us a Kansas City Social Media Club breakfast with a lot of new and interesting faces. We had a great turnout and discussion. The main topic of the morning was similar to our most recent blog post about the pressures and obstacle’s social media faces as it gets more mainstream in its reach.
Tara had a great response to the article. Pushing against some of my doomsday like predictions she said (paraphrasing) that if you build up a good reputation for customer service online a blunder might not be such a death blow but if dealt with the right way it can be excused by the community for what it is…a simple mistake. As long as it is an honest one.
There is a lot of good things being put out by SMCKC’ers right now…
The Life In The Tubes crew has a great new video featuring Sam. Geekvolution’s robot front man. Showing off their high end graphic intensive social networking platform. I have been lucky enough to see Geekvolution grow since Bar Camp KC and look forward to more news of Ryan Flannagan’s hard work.
Lisa continues her 40 day blogging series talking about the people that helped instill something very important to her. Making business personal. She thanks and talks about different people and their impacts on her life and the way she goes about it. Really inspirational set of posts from a very inspirational person.
Jenn told us about all the good work the Social Lites are doing and explained that there is a lot changing behind the scenes to be released. Our sister company continues to impress.
Whitney Matthews represented Spiral 16 and talked about their collaborative project with PBS at SxSW coming up. Looking forward to seeing what comes of this.
Those are just a few of the things people brought to the table that morning. We are so lucky to be associated with a group of people so passionate about what we do. Keep making things happen. We believe in the opportunities in Kansas City and the abilities for ideas that are made here to change the world.
Chris and I have been working behind the scenes to put Ideas and Angles in a position to hit the ground running in 2009. Juggling site updates, e-mails, phone calls, and meetings isn’t always easy and sometimes the growth feels like a huge blur but we took some time to reflect on the past 7 months. We still believe we can make Kansas City a place where technology and social media thrives.
There are so many people who have given us support on this journey…
Chris and I have known each other for more than 15 years. We have both been blessed with encouragement and love from our friends and family. I often say that I have no idea what I did to deserve some of the people that are in my life. Your interest and helpfulness in this project are not taken for granted by either of us.
Thanks goes out to the local social media community backed by the Kansas City Social Media Club. The relationships built through our shared loved of creativity, technology, and entrepreneurship have helped foster friendships that we hold very dear.
All eyes are on 2009. We look forward to announcing partnerships that will expand our abilities to help clients. There are some projects in the planning phase that will flex the power of social media to build brands from scratch. We also are finalizing plans to take on new clients that are involved in different and challenging fields.
Happy Holidays to everyone and best of luck in all that you tackle in this coming year. Remember, if you say nothing nobody will repeat it!
Had the pleasure of making the breakfast meeting for the Kansas City Social Media Club this morning. A lot of familiar places in the social community were there. It has become apparent there are a lot of hard working people taking on a lot of adventurous projects in the area. It is fun meeting and conversing with people that have the same passion for emerging technologies and are working on them in their own unique way. There is talk of setting up an informal panel moving forward to keep the flow of ideas going. There is also going to be an online resource that is going to have more usability and access to information. Thanks to everyone who came out this morning. Below is a video of everyone talking via Jeff.
Big thanks to @wrytir for hosting the tweetup last night. It is really neat to meet people face to face that you have followed through twitter and even other social media sites. A few you know right when you walk in, like Jeff from Jeffisageek.net, because of his video posts on 12seconds.com, but others you are not quite sure about, especially when they do not have a picture on twitter. @edroberts seems to be in the head seat along with @zenaweist for the Social Media Club KC which we are excited to be a part of and meet people Friday morning at breakfast.
Aaron and I had to head out a earlier than we would have liked, but are looking forward to more meetups in the future. I know Zach would have loved to made it, but work pays the bills right. I also have to give a quit shout out to @derek who I chatted with for quite a while and got some press from mega popular Tech Crunch website.
