Our Man in Shanghai Twitter @ on business card

In the rush to get on twitter, find people on twitter, gain followers on twitter, find customers on twitter and the rest of it, people are forgetting a few of the basics on this one. I attended the Next Step Social Media/SEO event which I have mentioned on twitter but I picked up on one theme: I was (potentially) the only one in the room with my twitter id on my business card. Even joked with Lonnie Hodge about it.

Before we get into a battle on the merits of including one social media tool and not a dozen, it’s fair to say that if you don’t use twitter enough, find your comfort zone and add something unique to your business card. Again, twitter has captured the moment over a lot of the other tools.  My first batch of unique, limited edition cards included both my linkedin and twitter @ for people to reference. What I posted here is my second edition card created by Sekkei Studio. (The sponsors of my blog)

Overall, I think putting your twitter @ on your business card can be useful for a number of reasons. Here is the basic action, objective and strategy laid out in a very simple format:

Action: Print your twitter @ id on your next batch of business cards. If you don’t have a clue about twitter, check out the resources that Laura Fenton has created over at Pistachio

Objective: To Highlight the fact that you are taking twitter seriously as a component of a social media strategy. For a good overview of social media strategy, check out what the good folks over at SparkPlug CEO have to say on Social Media Strategy

Strategy: It makes for a good conversation for people that haven’t heard of twitter yet. Yes, the first half of 2009 is definitely looking good for Twitter. You need to keep up on this stuff!! Here is a great person and resource: A shameless and unsolicited plug for Shel Israel’s upcoming blog and book: Twitterville

So many attempts to define, describe, deconstruct and analyze social media, I thought I would piece together an article speaking to the relationship of social media in our everyday lives. Here is my humble attempt to share my thoughts on social media.

Unique heads /Unique Hair styles

I thought this was a particularly funny and interesting one to start off a discussion about social media and visiting a hair stylist. Everyone has their own unique head. Big heads, little heads, weird shaped heads, Bumps, dents, big foreheads, little foreheads.This means that we can’t all have the same sleek hairstyle of Anderson Cooper. How does this relate to a discussion about social media?

I was a participant at the Ad:Tech Shanghai 2008 social media breakfast sponsored by RazorFish. If you were one of the fortunate few that got up earlier enough, it was unprecedented access to some of the coolest social media campaigns out there. I posed a question to Royce Lee of e-crusade (A Razor Fish Co.) on the issue of the size and scope of a social media campaign as it related to the size of the company. Well, just like a good hairstyle, each customer will be unique and require fine-tuning. Different methods and approaches will need to be considered for small-to-medium sized companies than the global scope of larger companies such as starbucks or ford.

Word of Mouth: The madness of all the chit chatter of a hair stylist.

Just like a good social media campaign. The hair stylist job is to have his/her ear to the ground and listens to their customers. They start the conversation and gain insight from their customer feedback. In most cases, the strength of the hair stylist is that they get instant reactions and feedback from the victim sitting in the stylist chair. Social media advocates strive for meaningful conversations and I think I will point you to Brian Solis and his excellent article on online conversations for further ideas and insights.

As we talked further, my guy was quite insistent on the level of buzz that he was able to get from word of mouth. He is growing his business but he was also aware of the negative impact. Just a like a negative service review on twitter( See: Shel Israel and review of U-Haul) can have a damaging effect on business so to can the people that leave the stylist having finished a negative session and feeling they’re opinions on the style weren’t taken into consideration.

I think social media advocates have all benefited in increased visibility and the co-branding of social media tools. Most recently it has been twitter driving a lot of my word of mouth for “Our Man in Shanghai”, business partners and friends. A retweet is a valuable piece of both word of mouth and part of the social media mix – especially, if you didn’t ask for it. The Word of Mouth Association has a handy Word of Mouth 101

There ya have it! A simple breakdown of my experience at a hair stylist merged with the social media ongoings of “Our Man in Shanghai”.

There was tought competition from the likes of Gregory Prudhommeaux of Next Step, David Feng, Steve Weathers, John Guise and even a photo submission from the busy author of Twitterville: Shel Israel. As well, when not working on 100 other things, managing his family and business projects in Beijing: Winser Zhao

There were a few other international mentions that should be listed, Robin Green who is an expat in Costa Rica and NYC part-timer traveling all over the world, Julie Schwietert Collazo. Runner ups get Kudos for trying and a website mention in this blog post.

The winner is: Calvin Chin! Founder of the peer to peer lending site Qifang. This is a classic entrepreneurial story of meeting up for lunch and either loosing a mobile phone or in his case: A laptop computer.  As many of you know,  I recently lost my iphone in the mix of project managment so this story appealed to me.

Although not as illustrious as being named a World Economic Forum(WEF) Technology Pioneer, I look forward to hosting him when he gets back to Shanghai next week.

I will still be posting through the holiday season but just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a happy holiday!!!