Alan See (@AlanSee) is Senior Marketing and Sales Executive at Berry Network, Inc. and a University of Phoenix Associate Faculty. He is founder of the ultra-popular Marketing Twitter group and talks about building community with “characters, cadence, and call-out”. Tune-in below to hear the entire interview.

Alan See:

Good morning. It’s Alan See.

Adam Loving:

Hi, Alan. This is Adam from Twibes. How are you?

Alan:

Adam, good morning. I’m well.

Adam:

Glad I caught you.

Alan:

Really early for you, isn’t it?

Adam:

Yes.

Alan:

I just noticed you’re on the West Coast.

Adam:

Yes. The dog was looking at me kind of funny this morning about why I wasn’t taking her for a walk, but…

Alan:

I understand.

Adam:

It’s all good.
So you are the founder of the Marketing Twibe. When I brought that up, I was like, oh gosh, this is a big one, over 1,800 members. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do and how it came about that you were the founder of this giant twibe?

Alan:

Sure. Well, I am the vice president of marketing at Berry Network. Berry Network’s an advertising agency. We’re actually owned by AT&T, and we operate under the AT&T Advertising Solutions division.
We focus on national advertisers to drive sales leads at the local level. From that perspective, we wanted to build communities around marketers and people who have a deep interest in marketing as a discipline.

I suppose there’s an element of luck, and, in some cases, I’d rather be lucky than good. Marketing was actually wide open at the time we were looking at Twibes as a platform and an area to build a community.

Adam:

Right, right. Fantastic. Is Twibes more about the members or the messages, would you say? It’s something that’s coming up with some of the other conversations I’m having, and it’s interesting.

Alan:

Well, we work very hard at building the community, and we actively try and recruit members to this area, to the twibe marketing group.
We focus on the three C’s. The three C’s are characters, cadence, and call-out. We’re characters. We’re looking for people who are interesting marketing characters or individuals, thought leaders, and we proactively reach out to them to join the community.

From cadence, I mean we regularly notify people that this organization and that the platform – I really like your platform – that it exists, to be able to bring people in.

We try very hard, like everyone, to be regular with the cadence, and not in a way that comes across as spam or in any way like that. But we’re working hard to make sure that we keep it up to date and that people stay notified.

From call-out, by that I mean we help share or retweet members’ content so we help their exposure grow in that way.

Adam:

Excellent. One of the interesting things is that you’ve created this neutral ground with the twibe where people can discuss the issues of marketing. Obviously, Berry Network is establishing itself as a leader by being here and facilitating all of this.
But it’s more about the community of people than any particular message or agenda, right?

Alan:

Right, absolutely. The conversations actually can be quite diverse, but based on the fact that most people who have joined this particular group have an interest in some area or some form of marketing, so the discussion generally stays that course.
But if you think of marketing as a discipline, even going back to the old four P’s in the marketing mix, that people look at marketing through different lenses. Because of that, the discussion around marketing as a discipline is actually quite rich.

Adam:

So what’s worked well, and what’s worked not so well for you, both with Twitter and with Twibes in general? Are there things about your interactions on Twitter or on Twibes that I could help improve?

Alan:

Well, as far as Twibes goes, I can tell you that I really like your pick feature and the marketing twibe robot. Those were well done.

Adam:

OK, good.

Alan:

We leverage those a lot as a tool to help build and bolster the group. If I could wave a magic wand and ask you to come up with something next, it would be if there was a magical way to leverage the pick feature by geography. That would be really, really cool.

Adam:

Interesting.

Alan:

But as far as Twitter or the applications in general, I, like most people, sometimes get a little bit frustrated when the system seems to be overloaded.

Adam:

Right.

Alan:

All in all, I can understand that they’re going through growing pains. So we can live with that from that perspective. I really haven’t found or had a bad experience on either platform at this point.
In fact, I really like the openness of all of them and the fact that in Twitter’s situation that it can actually feed other platforms.

Adam:

Right.

Alan:

That’s one thing that we’ve done particularly with the twibe marketing group is that not only in sending out notifications through Twitter, but through status updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, some of the Ning communities, like the Dayton Marketing Community.
We post messages through there notifying people of that group as another source to go to in order to connect with people who have an interest and a love for the discipline of marketing.

Adam:

Right. What’s amazing to me is that people are forging these strong connections through such small messages, and such fleeting comments, and what have you, but it actually adds up to something.
I think you’re right. It has to do with the ability for these tweets to be replicated on other networks. You can have a badge on your blog or what have you so that you start to recognize the faces, and the tweets start to add up in some way.

Alan:

Right. It’s really quite amazing what you can say in the message. You can come across in 140 characters.
We live in a sound bite society, and so while there are times when I wish, "Oh, I wish I had a few more spaces to go here, " in general, if you can’t say it in 140 characters, you probably don’t really have your thought down.

Adam:

Right. Are there any other Twitter tools or tricks that are part of your repertoire for your work?

Alan:

Well, as far as Twitter goes, I do use TweetDeck. We also use an application called Tweet3, which is like a web-based version of TweetDeck. I do receive DMs through my BlackBerry.
But I look at Twitter as one of those things… I don’t spend all day on it. I generally try and plug in first thing in the morning, maybe a little bit during or right after lunch, and then in the evening.

That seems to work for both me and our organization as far as being able to stay involved in the conversation but not feeling overwhelmed by all the platforms.

Alan:

Right, right. OK. Berry Network, tell me just a little bit more about that. You said your parent company is AT&T, but who are your primary clients then?

Adam:

Sure. We focus on helping national advertisers drive sales leads at the local level. So national advertisers typically, also many advertisers who have large dealer franchise or agent-type of business models, companies like Allstate, Meineke, MAACO. These are part of our client portfolio.
We are a part of the AT&T Advertising Solutions Division. We’re known from 100 years ago as having done a lot of work in the print, Yellow Pages, and now, as of late, we do a lot of work around Internet-based local search sites like YellowPages.com.

Our connection to AT&T means we’re also positioned to help with mobile marketing, IPTV, and of course now social media.

Adam:

Right, right. What’s your feeling on your clients in social media? Is it something they’re starting to understand or be interested in? Where are they on the spectrum of engagement?

Alan:

Sure. If you take the people that are not in Twitter right now – of course, it’s hard not to know about Twitter when you watch CNN or pick up "The Wall Street Journal." They’re hearing about it. They’re wanting to learn about it.
But I would say that it’s still fairly early in the adoption phase. We’re beginning to see clients asking about it and wanting to wade in, but to say that they’ve jumped in with their whole body, not yet. But I do think that that will come.

Adam:

OK. Well, thank you very much for taking the time this morning. I sure appreciate it.

Alan:

All right. Well, thanks very much for setting up the call. Again, well done. I enjoy your night job. It’s been fun to play with the application, and let me know if I can help in the future.

Adam:

All right. Thank you.

Alan:

OK. Thank you.

Adam:

Talk to you soon.

Adam:

Bye-bye.

Adam:

Bye.