We came. We saw. We Spoke.

Editor’s Note: Spoke client and Grande Dame of marketing at OneCommand, Lindsay Leugers, steps lively through the good fight of email marketing. Ignored by many, despised by some, email has become the marketing channel we love to hate. It’s time to vanquish the foes of this venerable tool and put its virtues to work for good instead of evil.

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Here’s a fact: email is a formidable marketing vehicle. It has not been squashed by spam legislation, it hasn’t been made obsolete by blog posts or tweets or text messages. Even the explosion of mobile and social channels hasn’t wreaked the havoc on email touted by some. Email is, however, fighting for its rightful place in today’s ever-changing online marketplace. This means that marketers who leverage email must do so more thoughtfully than ever before. Although the overall spend on email marketing pales in comparison to other media channels, the returns achieved consistently outperform these same media. To keep that trend going, it’s imperative we build strategies that prevent us from simply blasting out bland content because it’s fast and cheap.

Our approach should evolve over time and address the changing climate of the channel as well as the needs of our unique audiences. We engage in email marketing because it works. Period. Here are some tips to get even better results from your own campaigns:

Target.
Whether targeting current clients or prospects, there are many unique segments within these groups. Take common demographics for example. You should know which age groups purchase which products. You should know which regions you’ve penetrated with which products. You should know which gender responds best to which incentives. In these cases, knowledge is power. Using this intelligence, you should be able to target different segments of your subscribers with unique campaigns that call attention to what is most relevant to them — be it regionalized content, special coupons or overall design.

At OneCommand, for example, our entire email marketing strategy is rooted in recognizing the uniqueness of each of our clients. Since the majority of our customers are in the automotive retail market, we pay close attention to things like dealership franchise, location, the DMS and CRM they use, and even the sales and service volume of the store. These details help us deliver content that is specific and relevant — whether that involves sharing local or regional news and events content, or offering tips on how our solutions work with others the client already has in place.

Test.
Take the time to measure the variables that make your campaign more, or less, effective. Play with the subject line, the sending email address, the reply to address, links offered, the actual email content itself, more images and less copy vs. fewer images and more news articles, etc. Then, measure the differences to identify which is more effective. The best email marketing solutions will let you do this in real-time with A/B split testing features. Such a system will enable the delivery of essentially two different versions of your email based on the previously mentioned variables to a percentage of the total recipient list. Then, it will let you specify a time frame for the test, monitor the performance of each version, decide the more effective of the two and deliver the remainder of the emails accordingly.

In my opinion, Campaign Monitor* offers one of the best email solutions out there. I’m especially enamored with their testing features. In fact, I’ve developed a bit of an addiction. I perform A/B split testing at least once a week with different versions of the weekly news, tips and tricks we deliver to our current customers. Doing so has helped us to deliver more intelligently and has also opened up a bit of healthy competition amongst members of our marketing team. Doesn’t seem like placing bets on whether “A” will smoke “B” or vice versa would be all that fun, but I dare you to try it. Just this past week I closed my door and quietly did a victory dance to celebrate when a message delivered from me as the sender beat out the one coming from our CEO. What can I say? It’s the little things.

Measure.
The spectrum of open, click, bounce and unsubscribe rates is wide. Knowing where your campaigns stand on each of these fronts is critically important, but what long-term value does this information provide? Think about a monthly newsletter campaign. From your standard report, you may learn that 33% of your recipients opened the email, but how does this compare to the rate you measured last month or last year? You should be using these measurements to better understand your progress over time. Your email marketing tools should allow you to select campaigns to compare — helping to give you a better view of your rates and their improvement from, say, one month to the next. Armed with that information, you’ll then be ready to drill down into analyzing what made the difference such as time and day of send, subject, etc.

Measuring also helps you to predict trends. For example, this time last year, when the auto industry was facing its worst year in recent history, we lost a good deal of our customer base due to store closings, budget cuts and consolidation. Because I look at our subscriber list performance over time on a regular basis, I could see the writing on the wall. Our subscriber count was on its way to a big dip. To stem the loss, we introduced a weekly publication that offered best practice insights that were not necessarily linked to the use of OneCommand solutions. Instead, our new publication offered helpful bite-size treats in the form of general best practices and trends sprinkled with a little peer commentary. Though we did certainly see a decrease across our lists, the new subscribers we signed, and those we were able to retain with the new pub into, helped offset the losses.

Listen.
Give your subscribers a voice. Trust me, they have one and they will use it when prompted. Care about and respond to what they have to say, especially in terms of their subscription preferences. If you’ve not already established a way to pass control to the subscriber to manage their subscription—from the email address they provide you to the selection of campaigns or content types they wish to receive—you’re missing a critical piece of the email marketing puzzle. Recipients are far more likely to open, read and respond to a campaign that they’ve expressed interest in receiving. They appreciate being able to control what they receive instead of having only the age-old “subscribe or unsubscribe” options. Many email marketing engines will include the setup of a preference center for your subscribers that feeds directly back to your subscription lists — take advantage!

The idea of preference management is baked into OneCommand solutions, but it wasn’t something that we’d spent much time on in terms of our own marketing strategy. Until now. At OneCommand, we send a lot of email. We send weekly publications, monthly newsletters, system notifications, account management outreach, feature announcements, new staff introductions… the list goes on. We needed a solution that helped us manage the fact that not everyone wants everything. The preference center feature built into Campaign Monitor fits this bill perfectly.

Viva la...!
In summary, as marketers we have to take the time to really understand how this channel is most effective for our specific goals and objectives, and most importantly for our subscribers. I challenge that email marketing has become so second nature for most of us that we rarely give the measurements or the opportunities for improvement the attention they deserve. Change that today. Take stock of your efforts and your measure of success. Once you’ve done that and you feel good about your overall progress and go-forward strategy, think about mobile and social and how those exponentially growing channels can help your email make an even bigger splash.

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*Disclosure: Spoke is a proud user of Campaign Monitor. Many of our clients use it with exuberant glee daily.

Follow up: We recently stumbled upon this piece on the Litmus blog. We found the numbers interesting and slightly alarming. Still, we know first-hand that you can improve your campaign success rate by following the suggestions in Lindsay’s post above and others. You might even consider using the Litmus toolset for testing your campaigns.

By the way, we’re not endorsing Litmus. Not because we don’t like it, but because we have’t tried it... yet.

Editor’s note: Mark Pannell is a freelance social media consultant and occasional Spoke troublemaker. Kind of like the little brother we're glad we never had. In his nearly 35 years on this planet, Mark has spent time in the music industry, managed big box retail stores, and most recently, guided social media strategy at a creative marketing agency. In 1996, Mark was dubbed "Minister of Propaganda" by the drummer of the Detroit rock band Sponge. He's spent the last 14 years living up to that moniker.

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Social Media Rock Stars. Digital Media Evangelists. Social Engagement Gurus. No matter what self-assigned fancy title is applied, this role can be simplified down to two words: conversation starter. If I’m doing my job right, this very blog post should spurn its own conversation in the form of comments below.

At the dawn of the internet, millions were made on the ability to create a website. A thorough knowledge of HTML was akin to being an early investor in Google. Today, the superheroes of the web are individuals with the ability to… get this… talk to people.

An entire field of work sprouted up around a little blue bird and a scrawny millionaire. And many practitioners of the craft have a single, unifying battle cry: “You’re doing it wrong.” What they’re really saying is, “You’re doing it wrong. I know how to do it right. Let’s get down to brass tacks. Send a P.O. now!”

The business cards in my pocket read “Social Media Strategist.” Yes, I’ve ridden on the wings of a little blue bird and developed a violently allergic reaction to whales. I’m a proponent of social engagement. I’m also a very big critic of the craft.

This advantageous case of multiple personality disorder makes me stand back and assess my own strategies and beliefs. “You’re doing it wrong” is an arrogant mantra for elitists. Let’s try, “There are aspects of your social engagement strategy which could use some improvement. Let’s take a look at three of them.” Yeah, it doesn’t have the same ring. I’ll work on that.

One: Social Engagement Doesn’t Have a URL
Social engagement is an attitude. It doesn’t reside on Facebook, Twitter, or any other platform. It can exist there, but not as a standalone entity. In its purest form, it’s simply part of an organization’s culture. The company that we social media types all love to reference is Zappos. By now, I’m sure most of you have heard the “I Heart Zappos” story. It’s become the stuff of legends.

The tale that we all adore and have taken creative liberties with over the years is the Zaz LaMarr story. In short, Zaz ordered a pair of shoes from Zappos. She requested a return and meant to send them back, but her mother passed away in the interim. At the risk of making my own creative enhancements to the story, I’ll let Zaz tell the rest:

“In May we had ordered several pairs of shoes from Zappos for my mom. She’d lost a lot of weight, and her old shoes were all too big. She had a whole new wardrobe of clothes in pretty colors that fit, so I wanted her to have some pretty shoes that fit, too, when I took her up to Oregon to stay where her sister is. Out of seven pairs, only two fit. Not bad considering she’d never been this thin, so I was winging it, and the return shipping is free. The rest were here waiting to be returned. Because of various circumstances – lost label, my mom being hospitalized and me being away, the shoes were never sent back. There’s a time limit on the return of 15 days. Remember this. When you do a return to them, they pay the shipping, but you have to get the shoes to UPS yourself. Remember this, also.

When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the shoes, since they hadn’t received them. I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I could. They emailed back that they had arranged with UPS to pick up the shoes, so I wouldn’t have to take the time to do it myself. I was so touched. That’s going against corporate policy.

Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving. It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations. Big and lush and fragrant. I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears. I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had happen to me, I don’t know what is.”

I can’t think of a better definition of social engagement than that story. There was a personal connection between a brand and a customer; a connection that transformed that customer into a brand advocate for life. Now, here’s the kicker: What social network was used to reach that customer? Zappos is so well-known for their outstanding service and dedication to customer satisfaction, and the story above is so frequently associated with social media, that we forget that no social networks were involved.

Here’s something you might not know about Zappos: All new employees are required to go through a four week customer loyalty program. Two of those weeks are spent in a call center, working directly with their customers. At the end of the four week training period, new employees are offered $2,000 to quit—to walk away from the job, no strings attached. They want to ensure that their employees are there for the love of the job, not just the money. The success that Zappos has achieved in the social space is a reflection of their culture.

If Twitter and Facebook went the way of the dinosaur tomorrow, that level of engagement would persist. How many companies can say that? An effective social presence is not dependent upon any one platform or combination of platforms. It’s an extension of an organization’s culture, online and off.

Two: Viewing “Community” Realistically
Quite possibly the most overused word since the dawn of social media marketing, “community” has become an ambiguous term used to describe various groups of people. As a point of reference, let’s look at the definition of the word:

A social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists.

That sounds an awful lot like another word that gets thrown around often: demographic. Before this section gets written off as cynicism, let me point out that online social communities are a wonderful thing, even those built around a brand. Some organizations value their customers’ opinions, love to address issues head-on, and do a fantastic job of rewarding loyalty to the brand.

The danger of “community” comes from blurring the lines between a real community and your organization’s Facebook fan page. When was the last time a member of your company’s online community invited you to a neighborhood cookout? To their son’s bar mitzvah?

If Moneybags McGillicutty’s House of Widgets was given an absolute guarantee, beyond a reasonable doubt, that none of their Facebook fans (or “Likers” now, I guess) would ever buy one of their products again, how much longer would that community be actively managed?

Pretending that your presence in the social space isn’t a method to raise brand awareness and, ultimately, increase sales is not transparency; it’s delusional thinking. Going back to Zappos, they publicly share their revenue successes and repeat buyer statistics. Their social community understands that the company would very much like for them to buy shoes from Zappos.

Consumers are intelligent enough to know that their favorite brands on Facebook want them to purchase their products. Real transparency is rooted in honesty. I’m certainly not advocating the use of social networks solely as a broadcast advertising medium. Just accept and respect the fact that people know why you’re there.

Three: Grand Openings vs. Soft Openings
Recently, Lee Odden from the Online Marketing Blog reached out to 40 thought leaders in the industry to get their thoughts on Social Media Strategy Before Tactics. A wide range of opinions were offered and the piece spurred an offline discussion between me and Head Spoker, Gene Powell. Initially, I fought tooth and nail for the merits of strategy leading tactics. But my history in retail management bubbled to the surface and quickly swayed my opinion into Gene’s corner.

Retailers love grand openings. They make huge events out of them. There’s face painting for the kids, pseudo-celebrities signing autographs, outrageous deals, and frequent giveaways. They throw their doors open and welcome the community to come see what they have to offer. Many companies approach their arrival in the social space the same way. They invest thousands of dollars on Facebook fan page tabs, launch traditional advertising campaigns to promote their new presence, and print the URL’s on anything that doesn’t move. If we build it, they will come. Have you ever stopped by a new store a couple days before their grand opening? You might just find that they’re open. Experienced retailers understand the importance of a “soft opening.” They quietly open shop to a much smaller crowd. Sometimes it’s in the form of a “friends and family” event. Sometimes they invite other local businesses to visit first. And still others just open the doors and see what happens. The soft opening is a way to determine just how ready their staff is to accommodate business, what customers think of the atmosphere, and what last minute tweaks need to be made before the gala event to come. Any business new to the social space could learn from the soft opening method. Allowing strategy to lead tactics is fine if you’re 100% confident that the strategy will be effective. But is that ever a guarantee?

What’s wrong with setting up a minimalist Twitter profile or Facebook fan page to observe how your community will interact? More importantly, how will you respond? This “soft opening” approach might just reveal some surprises before thousands of dollars are spent on strategy. These types of discussions are often boiled down to, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Is a massive strategy developed to attract thousands of fans and followers? Or is the community built on a grassroots campaign and the strategy developed around what was learned during that process? It’s not the most exciting option, but more businesses (and the gurus they hire) could benefit from following the latter approach. There’s always time for a grand opening later.

Four: There is no four.
Not long ago, a friend of mine posted a picture of his grandfather’s automotive repair shop from the 1940’s. His business was successful and he was respected within his community. The children in the neighborhood also knew that if their bicycles were broken, he would fix them. And he did it for free. Why? It was the right thing to do.

That same logic speaks volumes about a company in the digital era. The difference is that word travels exponentially faster and farther today than it did in the 1940’s. Understanding that social engagement is platform-agnostic, that your communities are your customers, and that there’s nothing wrong with gradually entering this space can have a positive long-term impact on the perception of your brand. And maybe, from time to time, forget about ROI for a moment and do things just because they’re the right thing to do.

This post was inspired recently by watching clients use tools and processes we ourselves take very much for granted: extracting Zipped archives and accessing an FTP server. We do these things every day, but it’s only when we observed others did we realize that not everyone understands what these basic (and venerable) technologies are about, let alone manipulate them successfully. So, we decided a simple primer was in order.

ZIP FILES

Fundamentals
Zip files are files or folders compressed into a single “zipped” folder. To access the files in the folder, one must “un-zip” the folder using special software. Whether the software is built-in or downloaded, the compressed file must first be saved on your computer (preferably on the desktop for easy access) before it can be un-zipped.

Tools
Built-in
Most computers come with compression software built-in.

1. Save the .zip file to your desktop
2. Right-click on the zip file
3. Click on Extract All
4. In the Extraction Wizard, click Next and then Next again to start un-zipping the file
5. Click Finish

The extracted or un-zipped file will be similarly named and capable of opening now.

Apple’s Mac OS X has built-in zipping capability that is even easier to use.

WinZip
If you don’t have that built-in capacity, you can download the most popular compression software, WinZip (www.winzip.com), which has both free and paid versions.

1. Right click on the zip file
2. Click on WinZip and then on Extract to Folder

WinZip will extract or unzip the files for your access.

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FTP

Fundamentals
FTP or File Transfer Protocol is the universal way to manage and transfer files from anywhere using the internet. One can do so via their internet browser or via free (and many paid), downloadable software. We’ll discuss a few of the popular options below in Tools.

Whichever tool you use to access the FTP server, you will need the following bits of information:

• Host/server – It will either be a name, i.e. ftp://domain.com or an IP (i.e. 11.22.33.44).
• Username/login – user or user@ domain.com
• Password

This information should have been supplied to you from the server administrator.

Tools
Transmit (for Mac)
Transmit ($29.95, free trial) is an FTP application for Mac users. You can download it from www.panic.com. Once installed, follow these simple instructions to get it set up:

1. Click on the Favorites button
2. Click on the plus (+) sign under the Collections column to create a new favorites folder.
3. Click on the plus (+) sign under the Name column to create a new favorite under the folder you just set up.
4. Enter the settings for your FTP account.
5. Click the OK button to save your connection settings.

The connection should now be in your list of favorites. To connect and manage your FTP files, simply double click the connection.

SmartFTP (for PC)
SmartFTP is a free FTP client that can be downloaded from www.smartftp.com. Once installed, do the following to setup and access the FTP server:

1. Click File and then New Remote Browser
2. In the New Remote Browser pop-up window, enter the FTP server settings.
3. Click the OK button.

The FTP client should then successfully connect to the server where you can view, download or upload files.

Browser-based FTP

1. In the address bar of a browser (such as Firefox), type in the FTP server address. (Note: It will look similar to ftp://username@domain.com or ftp://ftp.domainname.com)
2. Enter the username and password in the resulting pop-up window.

The browser should list the files and folders on the FTP server.

Alternatives to sharing large files
To share large files for a certain amount of time, try:
www.box.net
www.senduit.com
www.streamfile.com

Find more alternatives here.

Editor’s Note: Spoke heartily welcomes winggrrrl and digital diva, Janeile Cudjoe, who provides us with solid fundamentals for crafting your B2B web presence.

When not consulting to clients through her very own Zig !t Marketing, Janeile can be found blogging on the virtues of Web 2.0 at Janeile.com

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It seems obvious why a proper web presence is necessary for a B2C operation. Their consumers are internet savvy online shoppers who have multiple reasons for whether or not they choose your business or not. However, a B2B company is somehow viewed differently. For some reason, their clientele is viewed as the traditional, white-shirt-black-tie types who rarely go online because they are too busy making things HAPPEN in the real world. Many B2B companies continue on with no or, even worse, a poor web presence that is not only dated, but boring and unhelpful. The fact that they can get by and still survive only reinforces the myth that a good web presence is not needed. The truth is that having a web presence that is dynamic, vibrant and on par with B2C Web 2.0 sites is beneficial in myriad ways such as increasing authenticity, brand assets, thought leadership and client relations.

Authenticity

Does anyone outside of your B2B operation know what your company is really like? Does your website clue anyone in to what you really do outside the context of overused phrases like “world-class” scattered about your site like a crime scene? Having a proper web presence means pulling back the curtain to the real you and giving your audience the opportunity to engage. Gone are the days when people were satisfied with talking to the nondescript ‘sales@b2bcompany .com’. Get rid of the glamour-shot, air-brushed, politically-correct website and get your picture taken sans makeup. If your smile is genuine, people will pay attention.

I know what you’re thinking – that this is all swell and dandy for B2C types, but not for B2B. As Rick Burnes of HubSpot said recently, “Lame excuse.” Authenticity in business is important because people like to work with real people. The idea that you’re somehow selling to a business and not a human being is ridiculous. Never forget that you’re not only targeting real people, but that your business needs to come across as a real entity too and not just some big nameless, faceless machine.

Leveraging Brand Assets

An online platform introduces a new channel to re-purpose content used in other marketing initiates and vice versa. The unanimous call online is that content is king. A deep fear of businesses everywhere is the time needed to generate that content. However, many already have access to great content — in offline marketing channels. If your marketing department is busting out fresh, engaging content for traditional media platforms on a regular basis, why not use some of that online to expand your reach and get more bang for the buck? Just be sure to optimize your content for the online reader, and use your analytics engine to discover what’s important to readers before refining your offerings.

Good content serves to increase positive brand equity. Think of it as another piece to the puzzle — one that supports all marketing channels.

Thought Leadership

If someone Googled your company today, what would they find? A disgruntled employee? A blank space where you should be? Or would they find content generated by your employees, and satisfied clients that set you apart as an industry leader? Okay, so maybe you’re not as big as Google and everything you say doesn’t come straight from the mountaintop on two stone tablets, but it doesn’t mean that you have no chance at being a leader in your field of expertise. We can all agree that our B2B enterprise should be known for something. So the question becomes, “What will it be known for online”? Something about your business will be found there; you have a chance to craft that in a positive way.

Thought leadership ties directly to leveraging your brand assets. If you have great content elsewhere and can re-purpose that content on the web, the chances of it getting around are not only better but will also add positively to your brand reputation. Craft your message carefully because labels fly fast and furious online. Develop content that is interesting and unique, and don’t forget to engage with those in your industry who are discussing related topics. In the Web 2.0 world, online engagement — with a point of view — adds to your reputation.

Customer Support/Client Relations

A proper web presence is going to boost your relationship with your clients. How? Have you ever been to a company website and felt uneasy about working with them because their site looked like it was built by the owner’s thirteen-year-old nephew who built it in exchange for an iPhone? Just as first impressions are important in real life meetings, so are the ones made online. A professional, first impression online is imperative to breaking the ice for prospective clients.

Secondary steps to developing good client relations can include having an FAQ page to address prospect’s questions, or live chat manned by your own staff. More subtle approaches may take the form of white papers and webinars, or addressing customer concerns and questions through social media platforms, including comments made on your corporate blog.

You do have a corporate blog, don’t you?

The name of the game is interaction, and this requires listening. You cannot develop a healthy relationship with clients without it. Your B2B company already does this offline; take it to the next level and make your web presence a relational experience.

Conclusion

The web is not just a playing field for B2C and ecommerce businesses, and it’s not just a platform to leave outdated content or plant one-way “look-at-me!” communication. Think of your B2B web presence as a living organism. It needs to make a good impression, listen, be authentic and leverage its brand assets to become a thought leader in your industry. It should integrate with existing marketing endeavors offline so that they compliment each other. The days of just getting by on a passive, boring or nonexistent web presence are over. Your clients are online whether you believe it or not, and they’re looking for authentic, valuable and actionable resources. If your online properties don’t offer that, someone else’s will.

Editor’s Note: Halloween. All Saints Day. El Día de los Muertos. The last three days of macabre celebrations have us contemplating not just our own lives after death, but the fate of our digital lives as well. What happens to our electronically connected self when our physical one, well…disconnects? Spoke friend and Vice Mayor of Cloud City Digital, Stephen Jenkins shares some practical advice to help ensure your data is handled with care, post-mortem.

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It is a precious few of us who ponder life’s only truly inevitable milestone — its end. And of those there must be even fewer who think beyond the immediate needs of our families upon our untimely demise (is there such a thing as a timely demise?).

The scene is typical of television dramas: A grieving eldest son distributes the prized possessions of a beloved father recently deceased. The collection of fine paintings, bequeathed to William Jr., the rare books handed down to sister Elizabeth. But what of the iTunes collection? Will the blog be shut down? What about the Twitter followers? The Facebook friends? The LinkedIn connections? Can you bequeath these kinds of things?

Made for TV movies aside, informal observation reveals that most of our personal effects are less likely to be kept in a safe or a security deposit box, and instead take the form of digital assets like emails, chat transcripts, research documents, multimedia files, and financial records.

The importance of these various digital sundries varies of course, from the mundane yet practical (car insurance renewal confirmation), to the amusing (self portraits with an iPhone), to highly personal items replete with sentimental value (personal emails). Regardless of their practical value, these items were part of someone’s life, and should be treated with the same care and respect that their physical belongings would be given.

The recent rise in a viable marketplace for digital assets also raises some interesting questions. An MP3 collection may potentially possess some sentimental value, but it may also possess a sizable monetary value. Assuming the purchase of one album or movie per week from Apple’s iTunes Store, a person who had been purchasing music for 5 years would have amassed a collection worth nearly $3,000. Upon their death, what happens to these files? Can ownership be transferred to a family member, or does the collection remain intact but locked away in perpetual silence under a thin layer of DRM?

Similarly, in a world where we belong not only to the community that we live and work in, we increasingly belong to online communities that mirror in many ways the personal interactions and affiliations of the physical world. In the event of a community member’s death, what happens to their persona? One day they are posting their list of ten best foreign films or photos of their vintage typewriter collection, and the next day they are gone. Presumably their friends and family in the physical world (I’m avoiding the word “real”, which implies a lesser experience online) will have knowledge of their passing, and begin the grieving process, but in their online worlds has the person simply disappeared? In case of high profile members, the online community at large may know their real name and begin a search for them via traditional channels, but many community members remain essentially anonymous and their sudden disappearance leaves many questions unanswered. Would the deceased want the community notified? Is there a final message for them? Should email accounts be closed down, or left active, set to bounce the email back to the sender with a startling yet informative message?

Are there any practical answers, or are our digital existences destined to a life in limbo when our bodies have been laid to rest? I would suggest the following steps to ensure that your preferences are respected:

• Take an accounting of all your digital assets and online accounts, note any applicable logins and passwords.
• Decide who you’d like to have access to these things.
• Decide what you’d like done with them after you have died. Deleted, updated, shared, etc.

Once you have decided these things, you can proceed in a few ways. First, you can draft a physical document, which could be appended to your will. This document could specify the particulars of the three steps above, but more importantly, it could name a digital executor who would be responsible for carrying out your final wishes. This individual should be both technically competent and trustworthy, as you will be granting them access to your digital world in absentia. Your instructions to them could be as simple as shutting down all accounts and erasing your hard drive, or it could detail which email folders were shared with whom, and which photos be made available on Flickr as a final goodbye.

Another route would be to leverage technology to achieve the same result without the need for a lawyer’s involvement. Deathswitch.com is a web site that offers a service they describe as “Information Insurance”. It works as follows: One enters their list of desired contacts along with their email addresses, then they create a message containing the kind of account information discussed above. Next, a time interval is set. It could be once a day, it could be once a year. If the user does not log into the site during the specified interval, indicating that they are alive, the system will automatically send out their message to the people on their list. I cannot vouch for the security or functionality of this service (now that I think of it, can anyone?) which costs $20 a year to maintain, but in theory it is a practical approach to the dilemma of sharing information in the case of an unexpected (or perhaps expected) death with friends, family, and co-workers, all of which can receive custom messages. Just don’t forget to log in, or you, very much alive, may find yourself having to explain why half of your work email consists of fantasy baseball updates and why the password to your Facebook account is “ihearttwilight”.

Regardless of the approach you take to safeguarding the future of your digital life, it is important that you give some thought to it. Get organized, make a plan, and then live your life to the fullest, knowing that your digital afterlife is safe and sound.

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Lead on, spirit! Read how Facebook is dealing with the subject of “dead data.&rdquo

Editor’s Note: Spoke friend and multimedia virtuoso (think modern Renaissance man, truly) Steve Mockensturm sidesteps the usual “shop talk” in lieu of existentialist thoughts on the machines that use us, er… we use. These ideas resonate and compel us to ask deeper questions about the often perverse marriage between our real and virtual worlds. The answers are hard to come by, let alone (at times) uncomfortable to consider.

When not tending his garden, Steve cultivates wisdom as @boonhogganbeck on Twitter, and digs in the dirt daily at Madhouse.

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“When you come to a fork in the road... take it!” — Yogi Berra

At a most fundamental level, our computers are simple and not smart at all. They can only do one, solid thing; make a determination as to whether something is true or false. That’s all a computer has ever been able to do. It’s a binary, boolean world where everything is, at its core, a decision between a one and a zero, on or off, thing or not-thing.

Furthermore, this sophisticated Difference Engine can only make these logical decisions one-at-a-time. Though the speed of decisions is impressive and things may appear to happen at the same time, the basic event stream of any given protocol cannot proceed until a decision — the only decision — is made: Does this request evaluate this way or that way?

The beat, the drummer, the traffic cop that keeps all these decisions organized is a simple clock running at a ridiculous speed. Choices are made between the ticks. For example, this piece is being written on a device that can make roughly 5.6 billion logical decisions per second. That’s how it works.

We can think of life this way sometimes. Though we are not Vulcans and we often hear, “It’s not a black and white world,” it sort of is. You are not here, you are there. Light is not dark, hot is not cold, good is not evil and Marvel is not DC. Our entire planet is quite literally bipolar and as technology marches apace, it is no small coincidence the human condition seems more and more polarized. We don’t appear to get along with each other as we used to. Our differences dictate behavior more than our similarities. Us and them. Binary logic.

Luddites and other critics of technology might argue the economics of dominion that technology facilitates, but the bigger fear may as well be: Are humans losing the capacity to determine shades of gray? Nuance seems dead as we begin to emulate — though at a comparatively sloth-like pace - the devices we cannot seem to live without. You must either be for something or against something, but you cannot be both.

Apparently — even with crazy-fast computing — concepts of kindness, fear, belief, wisdom and love are impossible to discern with simple true or false decisions. But this may not always be so. Though the brain is mysterious and complex, it is — logic would dictate — of limited capacity. There is only so much stuff up there making decisions, and — just like the difference engine — we can really only think of one thing at-a-time.

Enter the world of quantum computing, true asynchronous processing and circuits that communicate with light rather than crude, charged electrons running through a piece of silicon. Someday — sooner than later — logical decisions will be evaluated persistently and at the speed of thought.

It appears the gap is closing from both sides. As computing power increases and creeps toward analogous thought through quantum physics and light speed transactions, human power seems ever nudged toward simple binary transactions. Science Fiction has posited more than once that existence is merely an extremely advanced digital experience.

Maybe that’s why we have a tendency to anthropomorphize everything. We are shocked when hearing that robots have learned to lie. Delighted when a houseplant posts a comment to a blog saying it needs water. We tend to make comments like, “My computer thinks...” when, in fact, all these things are just devices doing what they were programmed to do.

Perhaps binary logic is an ancient part of human nature just now being thrown into the light and we are more like the difference machines — and they like us — than we’d care to admit. Doing what we’re programmed to do. We might do well to re-examine choice and free will and what makes something right or wrong. Life is nothing, if not perpetual observation and processing of data and no decision we can ever make is more fundamental than a yes or a no.

True?

© 2009 Stephen Mockensturm, some rights reserved.

Editor’s Note: Spoke social media wingman and l’enfant terrible, Mark Pannell, returns to the guest blogger perch to report the results of our homegrown Twitter Use Survey. After spending some quality time with our data, skip on over to TechCrunch to parse some enlightening results captured on the ever fickle teen demo. Salut!

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Ask and you shall receive. As part of Spoke’s launch, we asked Twitter users to participate in a brief survey about their daily usage habits. The response was solid, with over 100 completed surveys to date. Some of our findings were a little surprising while others were exactly what we expected. See for yourself. Without further delay, the Get Your Twitter On survey results.

The first question we asked was to determine how many hours users spent on Twitter in an average day. Not surprisingly, 67% of our survey-takers said they spent more than an hour per day with the little blue bird. What was surprising was that over half said they post less than five tweets per day. Only 5% reported that they post more than twenty tweets on a daily basis. There’s a Turkish proverb that says, “If speaking is silver, then listening is gold.” It appears that many of those responding subscribe to that same notion.

Next up: using Twitter at work. These numbers speak for themselves:

Wow. We can only assume that a good chunk of these surveys were completed at work too. But we’re not here to judge. No, no. We’re merely sharing the data. You can almost hear the echoes of TGIFF: Thank God it’s #FollowFriday. Speaking of which...

Ringing in the weekend, 62% said that they’ve posted a #FollowFriday list at least once, but only 8% responded that they participate in the meme weekly. But Micah Baldwin’s efforts were not in vain. A substantial 68% claim that they’ve followed another user because of a #FollowFriday recommendation.

So, we’ve established how often you tweet and where you do it, but how do you do it? A hefty 78% use a method other than the Twitter website. The big winners were third-party applications like TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop, and HootSuite, accounting for 60% of the responses. Taking the party on the road, 15% rely on a mobile app as their primary means of giving us the bird.

Speaking of third-party apps, picture sharing has clearly made its way into the mainstream. Two-thirds of our tweeps use a service to share photos on Twitter, with 17% of the total users also contributing some video love. This question brought to light an interesting trend: While some users post photos, but not videos, none of those surveyed share videos without also sharing pics. It seems as though picture sharing is a gateway drug to video sharing.

A staggering 89% of those surveyed use a URL-shortening service to share links. That’s a lot of characters banished to the Island of Misfit URL’s. And characters weren’t the only ones banished. Over 90% of our tweeps have unfollowed another user at least once. Auf Wiedersehen! And don’t expect our survey-takers to follow you just because you follow them. Eight out of ten said that they don’t follow back all of their followers.

Next, we moved into the science of followers vs. following. Surprisingly, the results were pretty even across the board. Take a look:

The majority of users either follow more people than they have following them or their ratio is nearly equivalent. With that in mind, it’s understandable that 65% of those surveyed said that the number of followers they have is not at all important to them. Only 6% acknowledged that it was very important. I think this shows how differently people use Twitter. Some like to share content; others like to peruse it. To each their own.

How important are looks? 72% of respondents occasionally change the aesthetics of their profile page. While this could be a holdover from their MySpace days, it’s more likely that folks just like to have a presence on Twitter that’s as unique as they are. But how unique are they? 46% of those responding have used a Twitter grading service on themselves to find out. Ironically, only 33% have used one on another user. I can’t think of a funny word that combines narcissism and Twitter. Insert your own here.

To wrap up the survey, we wanted to discover the other ways that Twitter users utilize the social web. While its popularity is not in question, an incredible 95% of those responding also have a Facebook account. Maybe even more remarkable is the fact that 78% also use LinkedIn. The network (which is more geared toward professional use) outpaced MySpace by more than double. Social sites outside of the “Big Three” also topped the one-time juggernaut, further signaling the sharp decline of MySpace’s popularity.

That “Other” category likely includes social bookmarking sites like Delicious, StumpleUpon, and reddit. Six out of ten tweeps use those services at least occasionally, with over a quarter indicating that they contribute linkage frequently. Last, but not least: blogs. Three-quarters of those surveyed maintain a personal blog or website. Of those responding, 49% update their blogs frequently. Feedburner has its hands full.

To close things out, we asked, “Is there anything else you’d like to share?” Many of the comments were kudos on the launch of the Spoke website. But beyond the much-appreciated kind words, there was some delightful commentary. One user wanted to learn more about Twitter grading services. Personally, I use Twitter Grader frequently, but their methodology in determining a “score” is a little hazy. For more detailed analytics, Twitter Analyzer and Twitalyzer (two different services) offer more stats than you can shake a stick at. To get a better look at how frequently a user tweets, who they’re tweeting, and when, take a peek at TweetStats.

Another friend of Spoke asked which Blackberry application we would recommend for updating both Twitter and Facebook. As none of us are Blackberry users (the others at Spoke frequently remind me of their iPhones’ superiority to my Windows Mobile device), I redirected the question to the most Blackberry-usin’, tweetin’ Facebooker I know: Mashable’s Events Director, Brett Petersel. Presently, Mr. Petersel is using SocialScope for all of his mobile updating needs, so I’d say it’s worth a look.

While the survey was intended to educate us, it looks like we weren’t the only ones learning from it. One user said, “Yikes – just realized that I’m not at all using Twitter to its max potential. Thanks for quantifying that!” I think that’s true of most of us. If the survey brought that to light, we’re glad we could help!

If there’s one thing we know about the social web, it’s that everyone perceives things differently. One person remarked, “Isn’t this survey skewed by defaulting each question to the first choice?” Another offered, “You really know your Twitter user. I almost didn’t have to change anything.” While I’d love to take credit for having a deep understanding of the average Twitter user, the truth is much less glamorous. The service we use to generate these surveys requires that one radio button be selected by default (in compliance with W3C specifications, although all rules have exceptions). But it is a good example of how differently we view things.

Finally, Spoke would like to thank everyone who participated in the survey. You’ve given us a peek inside the minds of a Twitter user, which is much akin to opening Pandora’s Box. Thank you also for your interest in our findings. If you’re reading this at work, we apologize for interrupting your Twitter time.

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Feel free to download all results in graph form: Spoke_TwitterSurvey09.doc (1.3Mb)

Editor’s Note: We invited Spoke social media wingman, Mark Pannell, to write the following comparison of two of the most-used multi-user, web-based Twitter apps. If you recall, Mark brought his expertise to bear for our ongoing Twitter use survey. We at Spoke have spent time with both platforms reviewed below, but have lived with HootSuite (1.0, and now 2.0) the longest. We encourage you to try both services and let us know if your conclusions match ours.

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As Twitter becomes a more popular tool for marketing, CRM, and customer support, organizations are flooding to participate in the conversation. While Twitter provides an outstanding platform for facilitating that interaction, its web interface is not exactly ideal for efficiency. Toggling back and forth between @replies, DM’s, and search results could slow an organization’s usage to a crawl. In a medium built around immediacy, a better set of tools is needed to leverage Twitter for business use.

Two key players have emerged in the race to meet the needs of businesses in the Twittersphere and they couldn’t be more different. CoTweet is the app of choice for heavy-hitters like Ford, Starbucks, and Coca-Cola. Their friendly rival, HootSuite, is used by the likes of Revision3 and the Whitehouse (yes, that Whitehouse). HootSuite’s first foray into this arena offered a host of features that were innovative at the time, but have become commonplace since its release. For the sake of a fair comparison, we’ll be putting CoTweet up against the upcoming HootSuite 2.0 (Beta), which features a more robust set of tools compared to their initial offering.

As different as the user experiences are between these two services, they share some core features. At the very least, one should expect support for multiple Twitter accounts, multiple users, scheduled tweets, and integrated URL-shortening. Check, check, check, and check. Both platforms also allow users to automatically insert their initials at the end of tweets to uniquely identify themselves to readers. CoTweet calls them CoTags. HootSuite calls them Auto-Initials or HooTags. I call them initials.

But that’s where the similarities end. For a pair of web-based services heavily-focused on delivering similar results, they go about it in completely different ways. Let’s take a look at them as standalone entities rather than competitors for a moment.

CoTweet
The most noticeable attribute of CoTweet is its utilitarian design. Like a Madison Ave. maven yammering on his Bluetooth, CoTweet clearly means business. The layout is obviously intended to mimic an email inbox, a familiar environment for most.

The CoTweet dashboard with default skin

The CoTweet dashboard with optional Guy Kawasaki skin (for power users)

From the top panel, a user’s list of available accounts is represented by the associated Twitter profile picture. Hovering over those avatars reveals a list of each account’s users and displays who is “On Duty” (I told you it was all about business). Within a large organization with multiple users, it’s good to have a visual indicator of who is responsible for follow-up at any given time. The On Duty settings can be altered, as well as new users added right from that dropdown list.

A unique feature of CoTweet is the ability to assign tweets as tasks. When paired with the CoTags option, this becomes a powerful tool for CRM. Let’s say a customer had a bad experience and brought his tale of woe to the Twitter community. One of your assigned users spotted the dissatisfied customer within a keyword search relevant to your organization and reached out to him or her to help resolve the situation. If that customer wanted to continue the conversation after the user was no longer on duty, their tweets can be assigned to that initial user for follow up at a later time.

Aside from the ability to distribute “labor” to each of an organization’s assigned Tweeps, the interface isn’t as significant of an improvement over the default Twitter UI as one would expect from such a popular tool. The Inbox, Outbox, And Follow-Up tabs on the left sidebar still require toggling back and forth to access multiple sets of information. The features that appeal to business users make CoTweet evolutionary for organizational use, but not revolutionary.

HootSuite
If CoTweet screams “business,” HootSuite screams “Web 2.0 App.” It’s a little more vibrant, but no less powerful. At first glance, its components appear to be in disarray, but a huge plus for HootSuite is its customizability. The screenshot below is just one example of an unlimited number of layout possibilities.

The HootSuite dashboard

Users can create a tab for each account to which they contribute. Within those tabs, columns can be created for the home feed, @mentions, DM inbox, DM outbox, sent tweets, pending tweets, and favorited tweets. Column options are also available for keyword tracking, search terms, and user groups. All of these can be added and arranged on the fly with the ability to drag and drop nearly everything on the palette. A simple slider is used to resize the columns in real time.

Once customized to a user’s liking, HootSuite offers all of the information that the user wants in one place. Think of it as a more feature-rich, web-based, multi-user TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop. The customization of the experience is far more than a parlor trick. With the ability to stretch an account over multiple tabs, there’s truly no limit to how much information can be made readily-available.

Another big plus for HootSuite is the ability to add an RSS feed to an account from within the dashboard. This allows an organization to auto-tweet blog updates without the need to utilize a third-party service like TwitterFeed. Once you dig into the HootSuite experience and get past the visually stimulating UI, it becomes obvious that the app was built from the ground up around efficiency.

Let The Feathers Fly
As both CoTweet and HootSuite offer a robust set of features which make them appealing for organizational use, personal preference really does become a factor. Some might be turned off by the busy design of HootSuite while others might dislike the minimalistic UI of CoTweet. But beyond the aesthetics of each app, it’s the underlying mechanics that make the difference.

While CoTweet uses the popular bit.ly URL-shortener, HootSuite utilizes their proprietary ow.ly service. The advantage goes to HootSuite here. Although bit.ly does provide a nice collection of analytics, CoTweet requires the user to access a third-party app to view them. HootSuite’s integrated statistics module allows for quick, one-click access to this information. Individual tweet statistics are new for HootSuite 2.0, providing total clicks and user ratings.

It’s also worth mentioning that throughout testing of both apps, I experienced numerous error messages and failures within CoTweet. One error required me to remove my personal Twitter account from the dashboard entirely after changing my password on Twitter. Over the course of the next 48 hours, I was never able to add the account back into the suite without getting an error message. If the CoTweet team had established themselves as actively engaged in the needs of their users, this might be slightly less concerning. But a quick glance at their Twitter profile (with 14,000+ followers) shows a team more focused on boasting their accomplishments than engaging their user base.

I eventually submitted a support request to resolve the issue. Within fifteen minutes, I received notification that they were looking into and attempting to resolve the problem. But after an hour, there was neither a resolution nor any further follow-up. Dog years have a lot in common with social media time and an hour is too long to wait to get an account back up and running.

HootSuite, on the other hand, didn’t error out once during my testing. But that’s not to say that the app doesn’t experience occasional errors. The difference here is that Ryan Holmes and his team at Invoke Media are absolutely dedicated to the satisfaction of their users. With nearly 78,000 followers on Twitter, their profile page shows a company consistently reaching out to users to discuss even the most minor issues. Some of these issues aren’t even specific to HootSuite, but rather to the general Twitter experience.

If someone had asked me to pick a winner based on first impressions before I had any experience with either of these two apps, I would have given CoTweet the nod without any reservation. As the choice of a multitude of large enterprises, CoTweet’s dominance seemed pretty cut and dried. But hands-on experience with both products presented HootSuite as not only a worthy competitor, but superior in many ways.

The accessibility of information and the customizability of how that information is displayed are clearly checks in HootSuite’s column. If the team added the ability to assign tasks/cases similar to CoTweet’s system, HootSuite would be the hands-down winner. As it stands, both services offer time-saving tools which make them a better option than the Twitter web interface, but not by any means perfect solutions. To keep track of who is doing what within a large organization, CoTweet might be the better option. But for sheer efficiency, accessibility, and customization, HootSuite continues to lead the race.

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Editor’s Note: On March 2, 2010, CoTweet announced it was being acquired by email marketing software outfit ExactTarget. We’re anxious to see if/how the two firm’s offerings get integrated into a single platform. Congratulations to both companies.

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Update: On June 24, 2010, HootSuite announced the release of HootSuite5. The update adds several major features and hundreds of tweaks. We’re so impressed that we splurged (ahem, free download) on a copy of Fluid—a HootSuite deskptop client for Mac.

Bravo, HootSuite. Bravo.

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If you enjoyed reading this piece as much as we enjoyed writing you, you might also like: CoTweet vs. HootSuite: Battle of the business Twitter apps