BLOCKHEADS

It’s fascinating to see how Twitter has evolved over the past 12 months. A little more than a year ago, fewer than five-hundred thousand people a month used Twitter. Since then, monthly traffic has exploded, and now according to Quantcast, monthly traffic exceeds 20 million unique visitors.

Twitter Traffic Since the Beginning of Time

Now, I firmly believe that a very high percentage of this meteoric growth was caused by what I call “The Rise of the Bots and Spammers.” For a period of about three to four months (roughly May through August), you couldn’t log into your account without being assaulted by Britney Spears porn videos, ads for teeth whitening, erectile dysfunction and more. Twitter was infected with serial spammers. Mashable wrote a great article about it last August, highlighting the top 20 Twitter spammers. Just a few months ago, your Twitter account was infested with profiles that looked like this:

To its credit, the team at Twitter worked very hard over the next few months to address the problem. Spam on Twitter remains a problem to this day, and it will always be a problem. But, from my perspective, the problem has been greatly reduced.

So, even after taking care of serial spammers, millions of people are now using Twitter who have never used it before. And what has happened? Well, a lot of these Twitter newbies have very bad Twitter manners. Back in the day (a year ago!), Twitter was such a warm and friendly place. If you followed someone, they would almost always follow back. If you re-tweeted something, people would acknowledge you, and thank you for the re-tweet. It was all about connecting, building community, sharing and participating in a grand social experiment.

So, here are a few things that I think everyone should do to make Twitter a nice place to live.

Acknowledge re-tweets. It doesn’t take much. Just a simple “thank you for the RT” will do very nicely. Geez, somebody thought that something that you wrote was worthy enough to pass along to to all of their followers. Thank them for it, for cryin’ out loud!

Engage with your followers. Again, it’s the polite thing to do! Twitter is a contact sport and it’s like going to a big party where you may not know everyone in the room. You can stand alone in the corner and not talk to anyone. But why bother doing that? Re-tweet posts that you think are interesting, funny, thought-provoking. Comment on the tweets of others that you think are interesting. In short, get involved and engage.

Chris Brogan wrote a really good Twitter Etiquette Guide a few months ago. It’s a good start for people new to Twitter.

I’m longing for the good old days — a year ago seems so distant now — when Twitter was a sweet place to be. Hopefully this will help.

Durring this convergance of traditional marketing and digital media that we have been going through. One never ending theme keeps coming up. Click rates and bounce rates vs just simple marketing. I can’t tell you how many times I have been told by clients. Just get clicks. I don’t care what trick you use. A game… hit the squeel on the head. Whatever.  The same goes for many new companies that think that just by getting a web site up you have done your branding and the company is now in full swin

This morning on the Today Show there was a story on fake web sites touting incredible prices and the fact that they these fake web sites are designed to just get your credit card and personal information. By the way … A genius move on the part of the scammers out there. They rely on the fact that the consumer is just driven by price and deals on the web. So why is that? Well, mostly because for the past decade web sites have been built on mostly rational terms. Branding and traditional marketing concepts have been shoved aside like old women at a sorority dance.  Well, here we are. Some of the big guys have figured it out. But what about a small web site? I feel very strongly that we are now entering a new phase in the interactive world of marketing. The power of emotional branding in the interactive world is now upon us. It’s now not be just about clicks and tricks. Consumers will shop by emotion again. Traditional tried and true marketing principals will be able to come out in the sunshine. And good sound branding will actually help guide how and what is said in the interactive world. Look at Twitter, it’s very much emotion, Facebook, emotion, and now yes… your website click though rate… Are brand rate measurement tools next.

According to the Washington Business Journals Book Of lists, SmithGifford, has broken into the top 10 sized agencies in the Washington DC area. Also of note is that we are the fastest growing from 16 to 9. We are also excited because all the work despite the growth, is the best this year in our short 7 year history. Another bit of news is that now we are just about 30% digital from last years 0%. And next year we are projecting at least 50% of our billings should be from digital media. Not necessarily a sign of the times, but marks a year long shift here at SmithGifford. Last year around this time we made a conscious choice to be media neutral and focus on content based on sound strategy. The freedom that allows us is amazing. New media channels are popping up daily. We have also undertaking a relationship with SGS a new firm that when working with media, has media at the table in the creative and strategic work. The results of that relationship are truly inspirational. more to come.

I am proud to officially announce the launch of the branding effort for the City Of Falls Church. You can read more on the story here at the Falls Church News Press

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Roy Rogers Restaurants is a persona — at least according to Klout.com, a website that measures influence on topics across the social web to find the people the world listens to. Do your followers re-tweet your posts? Do you actively engage in conversations with them? And with the prevalence of bots on Twitter, how many of your followers are actually real? Klout.com, a start-up based in New York and Los Angeles can give you some answers to those questions.

Klout attempts to calculate your “True Reach” on Twitter. And it can give you valuable insight into who should be talking about your brand or spreading the word about your products and services.

According to Klout, calculating the size of a person’s audience isn’t as simple as looking at their follower count. The Klout engine calculates “True Reach”. True Reach takes into account how active a user’s network of followers actually is. If someone hasn’t tweeted in 3 months it is unlikely they are being influenced by anyone they follow. Klout also evaluates how engaged a person’s followers are. Have they ever @ mentioned or retweeted them? Do they have any common friends and do they talk about the same topics? True Reach allows Klout to go beyond the easily gamed follower count to understand the size of someone’s real audience.

Companies are trying to figure out the social web, and services like Klout can provide valuable insight for measuring the effectiveness of their social marketing programs. You see, when it comes to Twitter, it’s not only about how many followers you have, but how engaged they are with you, and how influential you are with them.

For those of you interested, you can read more about the Klout methodology for measuring your influence across Twitter.

If someone had told me a while ago, that I would be standing in a room at the national geographic museum with Terra Cotta warriors and the ace of cakes , I would have called them nuts. And yet. there I was. What a crazy world the world of advertising is. One minute you are under a car talking about suspension parts. Then helping a low income housing group, and then looking in the eyes of a 2000 year old warrior from China. Last nights opening cocktail party for the Terra Cotta Warrior exhibit was a huge success. It was announced that over 97,000 tickets have been pre-sold. That shatters all the records set by the other museums in the US. Congrats to all the Smithgifs for all there hard work.. And for all the other folks out there.. Let them eat cake! Woohooo!

One of the charms of working in an old building is it’s history. We know that it used to be a sheet metal factory of sorts. Duct work, AC units…. We also know that the alley behind us was known as Sally’s Alley. It’s were the hookers hung out here in the Arlington, Falls Church Area during the 60’s and 70’s . One thing though that has been bothering us is that even though we have cleaned up and somewhat fixed up our new space next door, no one wants to go in there. So we wondered. Is there a ghost in there? Whats so creepy about the space…. Meet Fred, Fred along with being our Twitter, and Facebook  guy is also a spiritual healer and basically in touch with that side of the world. We invited him into the space and said. Whats up here? He started feeling it. his hands started burning and pointed to the basement steps. As clear as day, he said. There is a dead woman down there. Head trauma and in a pool of blood. She died in 1943 AND she has not left the building either. CRAP! Now what is interesting is how the agency dealt with this news yesterday. We all unanimously went to the steps and invited her to the party. Said she was welcome to hang out and go to work - that she represented a segment of society that we had not talked to yet. We also invited her to lunch. We had Pizza today…We all are wondering though, is it Sally, is this her alley?  Stay tuned…

One thing is for sure in the communications business. We will try everything when it comes to communicating. So when facebook came into being. We jumped in. Signed up and invited every friend we knew… and didn’t know. I have to admit, I am not a huge facebook fan. And yet I have 3 pages. One for agency, one for WoodyBoater, and one for me. I am horrible at all of them. And yet I keep letting folks on. So here is the rub. I had to go on my facebook page today. And i did not recognize one person. It’s like the time I had a keg party in school and it got out of hand….. Hey wait… there’s one of the guys at that party on my facebook page…. Ugh! I’ll stick to blogging… it’s so 2004…

It all kinda snuck up on us to be honest. While preparing for several pitches this year it dawned on us that when we think of ourselves with our media companies we are a 50 million dollar ad and interactive  agency. Really. We have been working with the same two media companies for the past 7 years. And as a combined company umbrella for 1 year with SGS. It’s how the agency would look if we included media. We have been very focused here to be a media neutral company. We believe that creative thinking comes from a sound strategy and that strategy guides all. Including media. Spurrier media and SmithGifford for years have been preaching the marriage of media and creative as a seamless way to communicate.With Clients like The Virgina Lottery,  Identity Guard and lately The National Geographic Museum ….. For example the latest campaign for Terra Cotta Warriors for the Museum  has had almost no traditional media, and yet they have pre sold close to 60,000 tickets and the show has not even started yet.

So is this like having a baby and not even knowing your pregnant? No, It’s like being Octamom and not knowing your pregnant…. To be fare though, we don’t think of billings here, profit margins, billable hours, nor do we think about the size of the staff, or our non corner offices or chasing new business on a whim. We are very much focused on one thing… Doing great work. Period. Only lately we have been approached by companies that require us to package our package and low and behold. There we are… one of the largest agencies in Virginia, maybe even the largest independently owned agency in the area…. Fighting it all the way… we are happy being this way, our staff is happy being this way, our clients are happy, and hopefully folks watching our stuff are happy. Thats what its all about.