My new Blog is at http://patrickdsouza1.wordpress.com/

Dear followers (all 7 of you:),

I have decided to migrate my blog over to Wordpress. The functionality they offer is a lot better and most readers prefer the experience they provide too.

Moving forward all my posts will be on my Wordpress blog - not here. You can access it at http://patrickdsouza1.wordpress.com/

Cheers

Patrick

What Twitter Users Will Do Next

Twitter was new, it isn’t any more. And that is going to change the way people behave on the platform.

One of the first things I think we can expect to see people on Twitter do is get more selective about who they follow.

Until now, this hasn’t really been the case, as users have tried to understand the platform by exploring it. In the process, following brands and people who under normal circumstances they may have not.

The behavioural norm on Twitter has been to follow someone – when they follow you. This has had a benefit – an increase in the number of an individual’s followers which for a while could be described as flattering.

I think most seasoned users are over that feeling now and will soon start to look for more control over their experience on the platform. Such control can only come from being more selective about the people and brands they allow on it – as far as their sphere of personal influence and interaction is concerned.

I think people could well also start to develop multiple profiles on the platform based on how they plan to use it. People could well, for example, develop a personal and a professional handle to ensure their updates are relevant to the people who are exposed to them. Given the public, or ‘indiscreet’ nature of the platform, it seems only natural that people over time will want to separate their personal lives from their professional ones.

Whatever changes in behaviour do occur, one thing is certain. People will get more selective about who they follow - the simple desire to be more in control of their experience will ensure this.

The implication for brands - be genuinely interesting in your Tweets to consumers. That is, if you want them to continue following you.

How many fans does your brand 'really' have on Facebook?

Marketers have started to use 'contests' and 'promotions' in an increasingly frequent way to build fans for their brands on Facebook.

What they may be doing (and expensively too), is creating a collection of 'contest enthusiasts' rather a database of fans - in the true sense of the word.

Genuine fans have a high level of 'emotion' and 'empathy' to a brand and are unswerving in their loyalty to it.

However most contests and promotions are not designed to attract such fans (brand enthusiasts or advocates in essence) but a much more mainstream set of customers - including those who belong to competitors.

The result is that many brands have ended up with 'so called' fans as opposed to 'genuine' ones.

What do you do if you've built your fan base using contests and promotions? 
The first step is to look at how you might segment it to understand who on your database is actually a fan and who is not.

A good way to do this is to use the principle of NPS (Net Promoter Score). NPS (www.netpromoter.com), was developed by loyalty guru Frederick Reicheld and is now a trademark owned by Bain Consulting and Satmetrix Systems.

What NPS helps you to do is break down your customers into 3 key segments - Promoters, Detractors and Passives - all by their responses to one key question 'would you recommend this brand to a family member or friend?'

By breaking down your fan base in this way, NPS helps you to understand the emotional traction of your brand - its pull and strength in relation to your fans on Facebook.

What's the benefit of undertaking this exercise?
It can help you get a more genuine, down to earth picture of the emotional strength of your brand as it relates to your fans on Facebook.

It can help you to figure out who's a fan, whose not - and start to look at your strategy for Facebook with a  much clearer and better defined set of objectives.

And finally, when you segment your fan base this way, and apply the principle of NPS at regular intervals, you start to see whether the initiatives you're undertaking on Facebook are having the desired impact and shifting the needle when it comes to your fans - or not.