Youtube's new Vuvuzela-izer. Also, a kitten in a hat.

All this attention means vuvuzela vendors are enjoying a huge windfall. One grocery store — in England no less! — has already sold over 40,000 at £2 a piece; their briskest sales measured one horn sold every two seconds so far. Vuvuzela producers are struggling to keep up with overwhelming demand, churning out an amazing 20,000 a day. These sorts of numbers show what happens when a product, idea or brand go viral – immediate, global exposure which translate into amazing opportunities for growth.

What is especially important to notice is the vital role the internet, and it’s social media features, have played in building up the vuvuzela hype. Emerging communication tools (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Mobile web and apps) have been particularly well leveraged to spread vuvuzela fever and build it into something more than just a traditional African horn. It has become THE symbol of the World Cup. This is every brand builder’s dream and shows, once and for all, that if we want to grow and communicate online, it is no longer possible to ignore these marketing tools. We have to develop an overall online strategy that takes these traffic sources into account or risk losing out on being the next Big Thing.

KS: Well, I graduated from DePauw University with degrees in Philosophy and Environmental Geoscience and minors in Spanish and Chemistry. While there I was lucky enough to travel the world and work with a lot of great organizations helping others. After graduation, I took the LSAT while working in Washington D.C. and then got out to San Diego, where I surfed all day and dreamed up a business where I sold childrens clothing in order to fund the dozens of good causes with which I’d worked in Haiti and Central America.

Kyle Smitley, founder/owner of barley&birch image via Inc.Magazine

In November, I was named one of Inc. Magazines Top 30 Under 30, and by our first anniversary, we were selling in 30 retail stores, moving into larger office space, and revamping the website we’d quickly outgrown. We have funded 3 schools and a clinic in Haiti and El Salvador. We hope to see upwards of $1.5million in sales for 2010. We will be announcing a plethora of great partnerships and undertakings.

PM: So I knew bits and pieces of the story, but hearing it in full for the first time, it sounds like it’s been a fun ride. I think one of the most interesting parts of what you’re doing is the way you are defining success at b&b. All companies are concerned with profits, but for you guys, money is not an end in itself, but rather a means toward your bigger goal. Our company has done a little of this… And I’m aware of a few other companies using this model- perhaps most notably, Patagonia. Do you find that there are particular benefits that stem from earmarking your earnings in this way?

KS: I think the benefits really depend on the type of person. I have a hard time being super money-focused, so this sort of earmarking helps me. Without it, I’d really dislike working all the time to get more people interested in organic clothing when many of our customers are hurting financially (yet trying so hard to be environmentally responsible.) But with the social (and of course environmental) good we are doing, I don’t even hesitate to sell, sell, sell. I know that if I do everything I can to get this $7k account, I will be able to call the school we fund in Haiti and tell them to add on to the building for their teachers (who live hours away and are forced to stay on site when rains wash out the roads). That sort of motivation is wonderful and a huge benefit.

Speaking from a business-only point of view, it helps give the product higher value for consumers. Our extremely high standards and aggressive mission also helps us stand out against the the snoozy, pastel-appliqued baby clothing that is currently flooding the market and is doing nothing with their profits beyond fattening the owner’s wallet.

“Without Twitter we would not be in business. Period.”

PM: I agree with your sentiment that if you can’t put in the hours on something you’re passionate about, then you need to re-evaluate some things. So let’s transition to the thing I really love about what you’re doing: embracing social media. A big part of your success has been your ability to build your brand online. I follow you on Twitter and you aren’t just writing your company’s posts… You ARE b&b. You connect with your customers on a personal level daily. If it weren’t for the explosion in social media, does b&b exist today? Would you be doing 1.5 mil in sales in your second year?

KS: I would honestly say no. Without Twitter we would not be in business. Period. I should explain though: On Twitter we’ve connected with people– people who like us and what we are doing. And these people see the tweets from me on my good days (building a community center in El Salvador and getting a big order) and on my bad days (having a fire nearby trigger our sprinkler system destroying inventory, me pulling countless all-nighters and getting bad grades because of it.) People feel our triumphs and progress. Twitter enhances our transparency. No one wonders if there is a heavily-funded corporate parent to barley&birch. We appreciate the support of every customer and let them know. We appreciate the support of every mom blogger and let them know. (Mom bloggers love us and we love them!) We keep spreading the love around and it’s like… the compost to our bamboo-like business.

PM: That’s about what I figured. It’s incredible to me that a law student can use these tools to supercharge a brand essentially in her free time. (and I refer to you as a ‘brand’ as positively as possible) I see how your customers react to you, and it’s clear you’ve connected with them. Any tips for people out there who think social media is a fad…or a just a way for preteens to discuss Justin Bieber? (It is only fair to mention, however, that it serves that purpose excellently as well.)

KS: I’d say, “UR DOIN IT WRONG.” or something like that. The best advice I received about Twitter was in chatting with @cheeky_geeky in D.C. (He’s super smart.) He told me that the best users of Twitter understand that it’s a conversation. So you shouldn’t just talk at people, you should talk with them. Engage with your audience. And that is the difference. I know I have an audience when we do cool things because I let them know that I enjoy tweeting with them (and I do!) so in a year of Tweeting about a kids clothing line (and not doing anything to get followers, not having the capability *yet* to send people there from our website) we have 3,000 followers! And love each one of them.

One of the designs from barley&birch

PM: I think there are a lot of people out there who are skeptical about whether this ‘overnight sensation’ is something that has real lasting value. And on top of that, there is definitely a generational factor at play in terms of really embracing this change. It’s a little bit like the oft-lampooned VCR clock…people are intimidated by what they perceive as scary technology…so for example: there was never a time when you visited your grandparents’ house and the VCR did not have a blinking 12:00 on the display.

Obviously, you did not major in Tweeting at DePauw or buy Blogger instructional videos off the TV at 4am. What do you think allowed you to adapt to this medium so quickly? And what lessons have you learned along the way?

KS: I think I adapted quickly once I understood what it could mean for us. It became, for me, a new way to tell our story and a way to meet new people. So I just figured it out. On a basic level, that is. Then, as I got more comfortable and saw that there could be an increased functionality in another social media vehicle, I would add that. So it was a natural flow. And along the way, the more people that found out about us and saw what we were doing– the quicker we grew.

I also forgot to mention that blogging/Twitter/Facebook/etc. should all be considered free advertising to anyone starting a business with no money. It’s an easy way to get the word out about what you are doing without having to drop a couple grand on a magazine ad that you will get zero return on. We have yet to spend a single advertising dollar, yet our web hits basically double each month. Social media!

PM: So you mentioned that you are actively working on the next evolution of the b&b web presence. How do you plan to build on your social media success going forward? Anything you can share about your new site and how you plan to use the web in the future?

KS: We are incorporating the blog into the site, so our customers can see exactly what we are doing at any given moment. We plan to dedicate a large part of our homepage to a news/updates area that will change weekly as new things happen with the business. We’re also going to try to feature new content monthly that has to do with our updates, inspirations, etc. Its just about telling more and more of our story to more and more people.

One of my favorite parts of the new website is that we are bringing together a bunch of our favorite bloggers to write for the family/community portion of our blog. They’ll be covering a wide range of topics–everything from quick snacks to babywearing to punishment. It will serve as a huge resource, and hopefully drive traffic from their blogs. And we think it’s a valuable tool for people interested in that kind of content.

PM: The guest blogging idea is an interesting one. You’re trading on the popularity of people who are your peers, but not necessarily competitors… and both parties get a chance to expand their audience. It seems like lately there has been a shift away from companies using social media like blogs and Twitter to just scream at their customers, “ME ME ME!”, and more toward providing content of genuine value. Scholastic is a great example of this with their This Week In Education blog. I think there’s the potential for almost an osmosis effect to occur– where your customers appreciate you providing information and insights relevant to their entire experience (in this case, parenting), and reward you by purchasing your product.

You’ve mentioned a few times that b&b stands for more than just clothes. For example: your work in Haiti and your commitment to environmentally responsible products. Is this guest blogging kind of an extension of that mentality? That if you’re going to sell to parents, you feel obligated to be a genuine member of their community?

KS: Exactly! Our whole position is that essentially business doesn’t always have to be (and I believe that it shouldn’t be) only about making money from people. I really believe you can simultaneously be a responsible member of the marketplace, world and community to which you sell. The coolest part is that doing it that way, merging the responsibility with being a merchant, really helps both to grow. We reinvest our money into the community that then helps us drive traffic and increase sales.

It’s another way of reiterating that we are not just after their money, we are interested in improving the world.

PM: Well Kyle, this has been a lot of fun. I wish you continued success with b&b and we’ll be following you guys closely! Thanks again for giving me some of your (severely limited) time.

KS: You’re welcome! And maybe next time I’ll turn the questions toward you!

You can learn more about Kyle and barley&birch at her website or by following her on Twitter.

As someone who works in the web world, Twitter fits nicely in my tool kit. After all, it is folks like us that created the service that is currently winning the Webby People’s Voice battle for the entire internet. Twitter is a representation of what the web has become: real-time, democratic publishing platform and the finger on the pulse for the planet. I use Twitter in many ways, but one of my favorites is as an aggregator for the cutting edge in web design and development. Follow my workflow outline to see how I have put Twitter to work for me.

Step 1: Someone Knowledgeable Posts Something Interesting

At its core, Twitter is a publishing platform. The idea behind the service was as a mass text-messaging status update system. So yes, networking has always been integral to the service, but the network isn’t very valuable without the communication. Twitter allows an industry leader, like Smashing Magazine, to publicize their own content (new articles), share cool things they stumble across, and take the temperature of the industry via polling. There is no lack of publishing platforms out there,  but Twitter allows shorter bursts of conversations or valuable content to be pushed to the entire Twitter universe (75 million users, as of January.)

Step 2: The Network Feeds Me the Content

As a life-long nerd, face-to-face communications have never been a strong suit. However, I don’t find myself any better adapted to networking with lost chums via Facebook. However, the ability to locate and follow interesting thought leaders appeals to me greatly. Twitter’s built-in search, suggestion tools and @replying has opened a new world for me by introducing me to brilliant minds in our field with very little effort on my part. In fact, @replies and retweets quickly expand my own network by shedding light on the networks of the influencers. If some random chap I have never heard of can enlighten @smashingmag, then perhaps I should at check out their feed. At the moment just finding interesting publishers who can enlighten me and push me in my career is as much networking as I need. Perhaps one day I will be a Twitter influencer, but that is the subject of another post.

Step 3: Twitter Acts as Niche Content Lens

Recently, Twitter unveiled the Lists function, which allows you to group other twitter accounts anyway you would like. I have setup different buckets for my social contacts, science news (NERD!) and industry leaders. Given five minutes between meetings or during my commute, I might scan my work resources list to see any 140-character chunks jump out at me. Of course, this one lists gets on the order of 100 tweets a on a Monday; an average Friday is probably closer to 300. This volume is impossible to keep up with, but psychologically I have been able to let go of this. I think the ethereal nature of Twitter allows this while my brain nearly explodes every time I open my RSS reader.

This concentrated list of content that only pertains to my interest in professional development allows me to quickly stay on top of the state of the art, while allowing me to continue to use Twitter in a more traditional fashion as well.

Step 4: I Bookmark the Shiny, Process and Save

So if I only allow myself 30 minutes or so a day to scan Twitter, how can it represent a valuable resource? Luckily another new Twitter feature has swooped in to save me. The Favorite feature, nearly identical to Gmail’s star system, allows me to take the naturally ethereal content of Twitter and save it for later review. Commonly I will scan my work resource list on the morning commute and in tiny breaks throughout the day. Given bigger windows of time, the afternoon commute and my last logon of the day, I review my favorite tweets from the day to see if the language that caught my eye has any real value to me. If the body or link contained do in fact seem valuable, I will keep the favorite label applied. If the tweet linked elsewhere to an in-depth article that can’t be fully processed during the review period, I capture the link using a ‘Read and Review’ list in my Google Tasks system. I review this list periodically during dedicated times of research. If the tweet or link contained have no value, I will remove the favorite label to remove the noise from my favorite list signal.

The Favorite feature allows me to hold on to interesting tidbits even if I can’t process them immediately and keep a running list of the information that has the most value for me.

Step 5: I Share with the World

If a particular tweet has lots of value, I will often retweet it in order to spread the word or thank the source. This is most likely when a tweet offers breakthrough information that relates to a project that I am currently working on.

Hypothetical Step 6: Harness the API

I am not yet taking advantage of the Twitter API, but I certainly could harness this tool to do really interesting and novel things with my work and favorite lists.  For example, I could create widgets for my own sites that share the valuable content that I have stumbled across. Or, I could create custom applications that were focused on making the above outlined process more efficient. Additionally, as the MIT Technological Review noted, researchers are exploring ways to capture, filter and analyze the “torrent of information”.

Not Just for Justin Beibers Any More

To be honest with you, I still don’t know what a Justin Beiber is, so I must not be a l33t tw33ter yet, but I have found Twitter to be valuable resource for me as I grow in my job. Sure I post original content too, but right now it is the resource nature of Twitter that I am getting the most return on.

Now, it may just be because I’m an English major and thus love the evolution of the English language, but to me one of the more interesting results of this attempt to leverage the social media masses is the appearance of the social media lexicon in mainstream advertisements. The earliest example I can think of regarding this meeting of words involves the 2007 AT&T ad for text plans:

While I acknowledge that the terms used in this ad are also utilized in text messaging, their origins are firmly rooted in the world wide web – specifically the chat features and forum boards which were the original social media locations. It’s should also be noted that at this time the marketing team still felt that now-common terms like “IDK,” and “BFF’ required the subtle explanation that their captioning provides.

What’s interesting about this ad is the way AT&T’s marketing team almost forecasts the future by showing a range of people using these new terms. The youngsters are well versed, as is to be expected, but Mom has no problem understanding their garbled syntax and even Grandma has bought into these terms. Flash forward a mere two years and similar expressions are appearing everywhere, including the tweets coming out of Capital Hill!

To really see the extent to which social media’s terminology has pervaded the mainstream, I present a recent ad for a new Samsung Camera:

Some key “A-ha!” moments in this ad for me were:

1. The lack of explanation regarding what “The Angles” might be (If you don’t know, check out Know Your Meme’s explanation).

2.  The emphasis on the new camera as packed with features that make it ideal for use on the web. This is subtly done throughout the ad, the best example being the shot of “Frankenstein” in which the useful nature of the small LCD screen on the face of the camera is plainly displayed. Their tagline of “Own the Angles” also falls into this category.

3. The screenshots of well known social media sites using great pictures supposedly uploaded from the product. It’s assumed viewers will recognize the layouts of sites like Facebook and  Myspace.

In a nutshell, the Samsung ad represents the complete immersion of social media in our daily lives. It assumes intimate knowledge of the appearance and use of social media sites as well as with it’s memes and terms. So if you’re one of those hold-outs who’s snug in the knowledge that social media will soon go the way of the Dodo, it’s time to tune in and sign up — it’s here to stay.

As you might guess, URL shorteners take long, hierarchical or nonsensical URL strings and crunch them down in to a more manageable size. This involves two steps: creating a short unique replacement URL, then redirecting to the original URL. The reasons for doing this include hiding the original URL, making long URLs easier to copy and paste or saving space in text-limited applications, like Twitter. The last thing you want to do is waste a bunch space with huge URLs if you only have 140 characters of real estate to work with. If your goal is to get people to click a link, you can really use those extra characters to enhance your argument for doing so or adding more hash tags to help searchers find your content. For example, which of these calls-to-action are you most likely to execute:

dj_c_check I blogged about a thing: http://www.manningproductions.com/blog/2010/02/html5-vs-adobe-this-sunday-in-5-d-space/ (113 characters)

OR:

the99percent Cognitive science behind why you should keep that brand name, sales pitch, explanation, etc SIMPLE: http://cot.ag/c6vkT1 (121 characters)

I am not trying to throw Curtis under the bus, just illustrate a point. Many large internet brands are developing or have already rolled out their own shortening systems: amzn.com, flic.kr, goo.gl, youtu.be, fb.me and gop.am (LOL and LOL2). Could you guess what any of those major online organizations were? Most of these systems take things a bit further. Bit.ly, a popular free URL shortener allows you to pick your own key for the URL you are shortening and provide analytic data, while Flikr, YouTube and Amazon use the unique keys that each piece of content already has as the shortened key.

By creating their own branded URL shortening systems, these organizations have protected or enhanced their brands in an number of ways:

1. The brand is transmitted along with the link when used by the general public, increasing exposure
2. These short, branded URLs are easier for mobile and social media users to spread, which may be the goal of the content and online strategy in the first place
3. Many people may be wary of unfamiliar domains and strange URLs that look like http://bit.ly/byQp52 or http://tinyurl.com/yjz5gka that the free services provide

While I may have imagined the NASA version of a branded URL shortener, I did discover go.usa.gov, which “lets government employees create short .gov URLs from official government domains, such as .gov, .mil, .si.edu, or .fed.us URLs.” NASA’s twitter authors have taken advantage of this beta program to help legitimize the links they post. If even the United States Government’s web strategy is more advanced than yours, perhaps it is time for you to rethink how you manage your brand online.

UPDATE: Found these brands with custom shortening systems this morning: arst.ch and nyti.ms. Cleverly, these online publications use this systems for their sharing tools, so when you use the “send to <social application>” button you spread the branded short URL.

UPDATE II: This article discusses using the Twitter and bit.ly APIs to customize how your site’s sharing functions work.

UPDATE III: Somewhere along the way Twitter rolled out the Favorites function for archiving specific posts for reference. I am now using that feature for saving tweets that like the mythical one that spurred this post.

I have always been a huge fan of NASA. In fact NASA has done a lot to shape where I am today. I was accepted to the United States Military Academy at West Point. I would have gone too, until I realized that learning to fly choppers was not step 1 to get me into the astronaut program as I had planned. As a result I went to the University of Michigan where I began to study physics; if I couldn’t be an astronaut I could still work for NASA in another capacity. At this point college taught me a valuable life lesson: being good at something and loving it are two totally different things. Couple that with the startling realization of how a physicist makes a living, and I was looking for greener pastures (a film degree.) Even then I spent the first four years of my career in an R+D role for science education and collaborative tools. Turns out I was doing non-physics work, but still living like a physicist. Needless to say, once I stumbled upon the NASA twitter feed, I followed.

Now for the research.

First NASA, as an organization, has an official twitter account. This account is branded as “News from NASA” and probably represents at least a couple of low level communications people who are tasked to populate this feed with all kinds of news from all over NASA. Of course, NASA is a giant organization with lots of different divisions doing all kinds of interesting but unrelated things—the soon to be dead shuttle program is just the most well known.

This main feed covers everything, from key administrators commenting on timely political triggers:

# Administrator Bolden commemorates Dr. King’s legacy http://bit.ly/5OlV6G Are you working for your community?
2:09 PM Jan 14th from TweetGrid

Press releases:

# NASA Revises Cost and Schedule for Displaying Retired Shuttles: NASA has issued a follow-up Request for Informatio… http://bit.ly/91Cw2z
about 9 hours ago from twitterfeed

Retweeting the White House’s fund raising campaign for Haiti:

# RT @whitehouse Amazing! Americans raise $8M+ for @RedCross texting HAITI to 90999 ($10 charged to your cellphone bill)
about 11 hours agofrom TweetGrid

And space missions status updates:

# Today’s station spacewalk to outfit the new Russian Poisk module for future dockings by Russian spacecraft ended at 10:49aET.
8:34 AM Jan 14th from web

As you can see, this main feed is interesting, but is very scattered. I have followed NASA for a while but I will probably stop soon; the feed contains so many random posts I don’t care about. I am sure NASA will not miss me considering the other 220,000 followers.

Beyond the pure posting philosophy detailed above, NASA has some other Twitter activities that should be noted for large organizations. First, NASA has taken advantage of the  fairly new “Lists” feature on Twitter. Lists allow you to collect certain feeds in one spot that is also visible to the public. NASA has two lists: one for the collection of feeds from the 10 NASA centers, and one for the collective twittering astronauts.  There is substantial retweeting, republishing someone’s tweets with linked attribution,  between these 27 entities (NASA’s main news account, the 10 centers and each of the 16 astronauts.)

But it doesn’t stop there. NASA also has a “Connect and Collaborate” page that offers umpteen ways of staying connected to what NASA is doing. This includes Twitter, Facebook, Myspace (seriously?), Youtube, Flicker, chat tools, various outreach collaborative project and even Livestream.  Of course I will focus on Twitter here, but I encourage you to check out this outreach effort. If you click the twitter expansion link, you will see all of the various official twitter accounts. These accounts number in the mid-fifties, not counting the 16 astronauts. Each of these accounts are more niche and draw various numbers of followers who are interested in the unique content that these accounts can offer. Again, retweeting abounds with all the cross over between various projects and locations.

I would argue that the followers of each niche feed are more valuable than the couple hundred thousand followers of the scattered main feed. Twitter becomes an outreach tool connecting a very interested public to content tailored to their liking. One such feed offers even more insight into NASA’s social media savvy:

MarsPhoenix I hope you’ll follow another mission: @MarsRovers, @CassiniSaturn, @MarsScienceLab (the next Mars rover, FTW!) & more at http://is.gd/Sny
9:58 AM Oct 30th, 2008 from web

On October 30, 2008, Martian winter was approaching. The next Martian summer is not until May of 2010 (Martian winter == Chicago winter?). No one knew when the next time, if ever, the rover would be heard from again. This tweet introduced the audience to other chances to follow similar content streams in the future. Even if Phoenix does not survive, the relationship between the team and public can continue.

I encourage anyone interested in crafting a cohesive social media strategy for large organizations to look into what NASA is doing. Yes, NASA is part of the federal government; however, the more engagement it can create with the public the better its chances of staying funded in tough economic times. Government agency or not, I think this is an important lesson for organizations everywhere.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that during the course of this research I discovered that Google has rolled out a real-time Twitter timeline in search results, similar to it’s news timeline. This should precipitate as many accounts as necessary in order to control distribution to Twitter to maximize search engine traffic.

And social media has become a critical component of the international aid effort. The American Red Cross has set up a cell phone donation campaign, where individuals can text Haiti to 90999 to donate $10, which will then be included in their next cell phone bill

As a side note, the LA Times is featuring an interactive Flash earthquake feature that provides interesting background on the location of fault lines globally, the types of faults and the different types of earthquake waves

Email fundamentally changed the way business communicates.  But in the always-connected environment that we live in today there are a range of faster and easier communication tools supplanting email.  A recent Wall Street Journal article talks about the impact on personal communications.  The impact on businesses may be even more substantial as companies try to take advantage of and manage a myriad of different communication tools.