Our very own Maaria Husain recently attended the Twitter & Automation session at SES San Francisco. There was a lot of debate around Twitter automation and whether or not it is actually effective.  The key learning is that a campaign should focus on the quality of Twitter followers, and not the quantity.

Communication entrepreneur Jeff Pulver opened up the session claiming “follower count” is a flawed metric, and that the key impact Twitter has had on this world is its “homogenization of communication channels.”  Pulver drew upon examples of national disasters, e.g., how Twitter closed the communication gap during the Haiti earthquake, and how it could have benefited relief efforts during 9/11.  We appreciate his take on Twitter; the reason it’s so sticky is the level of authenticity and realness it provides to users.

The discussion started heating up as Tracy Falke of Freestyle Interactive took the stage. Her take on Twitter is that users should spend time upfront understanding the space and then create a customized Twitter campaign.  Falke promotes launching, then “listening;” rather than having a CMO, businesses should have a CLO (Chief Listening Office).  Here Jeff Pulver disagreed, questioning how many hours a day she spends monitoring the tweets and retweets.  Tracy responded with the 80/20 rule (nothing new), where 80% of effort is spent creating content and pushing it out, and 20% is “checking in on the content responses.”

What Husain found most useful were some of tools Falke uses to monitor and manage Twitter.  Here are her top three:

1)      Cotweet: Tweets between different brands

2)      Hootsuite: Allows you to segment across different issues or topics (e.g., defects with new iPhone 4)

3)      Social Oomph: Automated segmentation platform (pick time of day, day of week, promos, etc., upload and push out via social oomph)

The last speaker up was Paul Madden of Automatica.   Their business model is based on making a Twitterbot look like a real person. Frankly, this turned me off, as it seems to defeat the whole point of Twitter, which is all about communication with real-time authenticity.  Madden went into some technical details, but all in all it was packaging black hat tactics in a pretty box.

While many people and brands feel like they need massive Twitter campaigns with large numbers of followers, we agree with Jeff Pulver:  Twitter should be used as a communication platform, simulating an in-person conversation, expressing yourself to individuals who care about your brand or opinion.

We leave you with a favorite Pulver quote from the session: “It’s loneliness and laziness that lead people to innovation.”

Looking for Bar Mitzvah or Baby Shower cards? Broad match strikes again on the query “bar mitzvah cards.” The confusing Tiny Prints ad that shows Baby Shower copy with Bar Mitzvah products in the Plus Box. We ask: how did this ad get into position 1?