While the monetary value of Twitter is up for debate, there’s no denying the social tool’s growing power and influence. Last month, Sean shined the spotlight on CNN, because they clearly understand the best practice use of Twitter for business is to use the service to connect with a widespread audience. Broadcasting brief headline-teasers on Twitter works for CNN, because providing news and information is their business. One-way, authoritative communication is a natural fit. For product or service based businesses, however, using Twitter in this way only serves as yet another news stream of information for the intended consumer. Service-based businesses need to consider harnessing Twitter’s ability to provide a new-age avenue of customer service.

Last week, AT&T put Twitter to work as more than just a promotional news service and used it to connect with Hawaii customers who were out of service. As reported by the Hawaii Blog, customers were the first to approach AT&T to request help and information about the situation. They wanted and expected the company to engage with them – to serve them through Twitter. AT&T adapted smartly to the situation by tweeting updates about the outage and requesting feedback from their customers.

As of November 24^th, news tweets have returned to the AT&T Twitter account. Whether or not engaging customers through social media will become a standard practice for the company in the near future is unclear, but the power is definitely there.

Scottsdale-based digital marketing agency, Elixir Interactive, invites Arizona destination-marketers and interactive marketing experts to participate in an idea exchange about promoting Arizona as a travel destination of choice in tough economic times.

As a result of the recent economic downturn, the travel and hospitality industry faces stiff competition in reaching a market of travelers that continues to decline. To promote Arizona as a prime destination selection for online travel seekers, Elixir Interactive is hosting an interactive marketing workshop that explores the benefits of implementing social media strategies in digital marketing campaigns.

Elixir invites Arizona destination-marketers and interactive marketing experts to partake in the idea exchange and discuss the latest research about what factors influence online destination selection.

The event will provide best practice examples of the tactics and strategies for leveraging social computing and other interactive marketing techniques to reach and engage those online travel customers during these tough economic times. A panel of experts will facilitate discussions that include tips on using interactive marketing and social computing to advance common business goals. The workshop is an opportunity for Arizona tourism and marketing professionals to connect with peers.

The event will be held Wednesday, November 19, 2008 from 8 to 11 a.m., and will be located in the Scottsdale Plaza Resort. $25.00 minimum donation requested, benefiting the St. Mary’s Food Bank. For more information, visit http://www.elixir-st-marys.eventbrite.com/

Resulting from the economic downturn, the travel and hospitality industry face stiff competition to reach increasingly fewer travelers. Online travel consumers increasingly rely on social media to influence their destination selection. Noted Travel 2.0 blogger, Troy Thompson, recently reported a major finding in Forrester’s second quarter consumer poll showing that 75% of Internet users are engaging in some form of social media, up from 56% in 2007. Another Forrester poll showed that 57% of destination marketing organization website visitors read traveler written reviews: consumers are the most trusted voice. Moreover, nearly 40% of online travel consumers visit travel-related social networking sites to influence their destination selection. If travelers are turning to social media, then travel marketing professionals cannot afford to completely ignore it. The question is, “How do travel marketing professionals get started with social computing?”

Charlene Li, a Forrester analyst and writer, has codified a process she calls the POST process in her book co-written by Josh Bernoff, Groundswell. The POST process (acronym for people, objective, strategy, technology), informs marketers on the who, where, why and how of engaging online consumers through social media. Like any other engagement in social media, the main goal should be to change a relationship, ideally for the better. Successful social media participation can increase sales and brand equity by facilitating trusted relationships with social communities that influence search and purchase behaviors.

Travel marketing professionals that do open the social media doors, must be willing to hand over some control of their brand messaging (as if they really had control) to prepare to address and sometimes simply deal with negative feedback. Controlling the conversations is not the goal — listening and reacting to capture new opportunities is. Every conversation is a potential opportunity. The enabling connectivity of social media has given consumers control of brand messaging: your brand is what people say about it online. The increased transparency achieved by engaging online travel consumers through social media provides immeasurable credibility and can invigorate your brand loyalists to influence others, thus diminishing the relevance of a few negative reviews. Since Google seems to love to rank blogs, the link juice from these online conversations will also provide your CMO with the ROI he or she demands. As travel marketing professionals compete to reach increasing fewer travelers, engaging travel-related social communities can expose opportunities for improving brand messaging and achieving business objectives.

As commonly know, the social web is an ideal forum for companies interested in accessing a widespread audience. Engaging in conversations, providing feedback, answering customer questions: These are just some of the beneficial aspects of interacting with consumers online. But what if your business is smaller in scale and local in reach? Is it a waste of time to participate on nationally active sites? Can the mass appeal of social sites drown out the draw of your small business?

Local search is a great way to access your target market, but boutique owners don’t need to avoid popular social sites when trying to connect with customers. Finding the space where local and social cross paths is the key to small business networking.

To find your customer base on the social web, research location-based groups within social sites: On Facebook, join the local network and make friends; For Flickr, find groups within your city and share photos; On Yahoo Answers, help solve problems of nearby residents on topics related to your brand.

Tactics like these will introduce your business to the high activity centers of social networks, while honing in on potential customers in your area. Twitter especially is a great place to gain insight on customer interest and activities; simply input a zip code and find the micro-blogs of people within miles. Other sites to explore are Placeblogger, LinkedIn and outside.in.

A major positive point about social media is that it’s a space where people can share in niche communities as well as on much grander scales. The interconnectedness between small and large groups is what gives the social web its news-and-information-spreading prowess. Local businesses should take advantage of the open stream of communication throughout the web in order to grow their brand.

As the coverage of the presidential election intensifies on CNN, I hear the social media microblog Twitter referenced as often as I hear Obama and McCain mention “Joe the plumber”. CNN is the most notable broadcast network that leverages and promotes the use of Twitter. CNN clearly grasps the utility of Twitter to connect with a widely distributed audience, virtually instantaneously, and for free. Social media guru, Chris Brogan, has recently published an article highlighting 50 ideas on using Twitter for business, where he highlights the effectiveness of Twitter for use in opinion polls, and its unparalleled speed at breaking news. So if you know of other effective uses of Twitter in business, please let me know.

In recent news, a “citizen journalist” was hounded for falsely reporting that Steve Jobs suffered a heart attack, which ultimately caused Apple’s stock to plummet 3 percent in a day. The blogger posted the fabrication on iReport, a social content site run by CNN, and within 10 minutes the web was abuzz and Apple’s stock dropped. After Apple issued a statement denying the incident, CNN quickly moved in to delete the report and disable the user’s account.

This scenario exemplifies the power of the social web and its position as an authoritative source within traditional media. Online users continue to trust bloggers for their daily dose of information; rather than fight the powers that be, news outlets have chosen to welcome citizen journalists into their domain. iReport is an example of user-generated content site hitting the mainstream.

Citizen journalism, in essence, is valuable because it adds a wide range of commentary and perspective to the traditional news scope. The debacle over the fluke Jobs report calls upon the idea of enforcing a blogger code of conduct, requiring citizen journalists like JoeSixPack99 to report truthfully and without exaggeration when under pretense.

To deem the perpetrator a “bad apple” in the Blogosphere, CNN is denying the reality of the social web – it’s propelled by the rumor mill. Fundamental to the appeal of social media is that it’s a space for open, uncensored, frequently offensive, highly emotional, often provocative conversations. Although the iReporter’s actions were careless, the proliferation of false information is nothing new.

One commentator wisely noted: “It’s a mistake to say this indicates some type of larger problem. People start rumors on Wall Street all the time. Anyone with any sanity would have said ‘I’m going to check that out’, not ‘I’m going to sell all my stock’.” Maybe the issue to be explored in this situation is not the irresponsibility of citizen journalists, but people who believe everything they read.

“The State of the Blogosphere”, the annual report developed by Technorati that compiles index data, blogger survey results, and analyzes trends and themes of blogging was released recently providing insight on the present blog landscape.

The report’s findings reinforce our understanding of blogs as a mainstream media conduit. The overall activity on blogs is astounding: In the U.S. alone, there were 94.1 million blog readers and 22.6 million bloggers in 2007. There is no prototype for the average blog participator; personal bloggers are the most prevalent and professional come second, but the categories are not mutually exclusive. Blogging is an activity that attracts people with an array of interests and fulfills a variety of needs, both personally and professionally.

Mainstream media is taking cues from popular blogs, incorporating similar styles and formats formally unique to the blogosphere. 95% of the top 100 newspapers have reporter blogs, and often discussions in the Blogosphere are used by the media as a gauge of public opinion and newsworthy topics. Television especially utilizes the opinion free-for-all that is the Blogosphere, broadcasting the feed of viewer input in response to headlines. This, of course, allows audiences to partake in discussions with traditional media, and all from the comfort of their computer chair.

So is this phenomenon simply the new fashion for journalism? Or will the pervasiveness of the Blogosphere dominate the dissemination and determination of news and opinion, taking over the role of traditional media? As long as readers find relevance in blogs, and bloggers create relevant content, the Blogosphere will continue as an ultimate network for discussion. After all, everyone’s a critic, right?