Starbucks is allowing a bar code scan from the phone – which is commonly using in the airline business to check in at the gate for flights.  Importantly this is not using NFC – near field communications (a technology I’m still learning about.)  I will be interested in seeing what levels of adoption Starbucks experiences and I would love to understand the costs at retail (new POS or technology in field) and what the payback / ROI would be.  Of course, this isn’t all about payback – its about innovation and testing a payment option that is most certainly coming down to retailers near you.

As a side note – I tweeted Starbucks about their announcement “pay with your phone nationwide”.  God loves Starbucks social media efforts but I often catch them tweeting like the world lives in America.   Facebook wall announcements used to be un-geo targetted, if that is a word, and I would get invitations to try ice cream at a Starbucks near me.  Anyhow – there is a real person at the end of the twitter stream – here are their comments (okay – mostly mine).

Note:  my still love you and others tweet.  I get apprehensive about suggesting monogamy with coffee retailers.  Truth is as a real coffee nut, I am anything but monogamous.   So I can really get into a deep conversation around coffee and various coffee shops.  Starbucks is the best espresso based coffee (read peppermint mocha) but the grind coffee isn’t up to local dark horse/red rocket like local coffee shops and the food isn’t quite there yet.  Tims, of course, is deserved of attention - fresh coffee, chili, plain donut, apple fritter (especially when they were knobby big) and chili - and that a box of timbits will make my kids do a lot.

There is a new currency in town and its called a Twitter list. 

If you want to win followers and influence tweeters than you’d better understand the impact a twitter list is going have on the twittering ecosystem.

A twitter list is a relatively new feature to Twitter.  It allows you to segment your followers into a special group.   It’s a bit tedious to set up but very useful.

I didn’t pay much attention to twitter lists since I don’t use Twitters’ clunky website.  I’m a tweetdeck fan with a constant eye to

Hootsuite which I suspect would be better for managing multiple twitter accounts on behalf of clients.   Tweetdeck and Hootsuite recently incorporated Twitter lists into their own offering.  But the rapid succession of adding twitter lists to their offering raised some alarm bells for me.

Consider:
Start now to get on a powerful list
If you are interested in twitter influence, then you should be looking to get onto powerful twitter lists.  You might create one yourself but like a blog needs comments, a twitter list needs followers.  The powerful lists will be the ones people follow.   And the list is just one person’s perspective of who represents that segment.

For now – I’ve seen mostly local or national based subject matter lists.  But I expect to see definitive segments on niche topics.  And I expect gaining entry to a list will get harder in the future.   Its not just about gaining followers anymore.  Its about getting yourself on a power list.

Diversify yourself – get on different kinds of lists
I’m still a list virgin but my intention is to get on a number lists – right now I’m on a number of Toronto based social media lists but I’m grateful to also be on some non-profit social media lists.  Any sort of freelance, independent, subject matter or consultant should be looking a diversification.

The metric of how many people follow you is confused. It’s just one metric in a sea of bad or highly fragmented twitter measurements, but it is confused now as you could have 100 followers but be on 10 powerful lists that are followed by double digit people.  In searching for a list, keep eye for how many people now follow the list.

Seeking who to follow is watered down by looking for the right list. In some situations, I will just rely on a number of people who I follow and use their created lists.   It’s the kind of ‘I trust people I know’ that will make social search rocket.

That makes power be to the owner of the list.  It is a painful process to go thru a long list of followers and segment them.  I expect that the lists owners may become rather protective of who is on the list.  And so list ownership could be a new currency.  Check out this owner of top Japan related people to follow. He takes his list quite seriously I’m sure.

That said, I would like to see a ‘last updated’ date and twitter list rating system.  I want to make sure the owner keeps lists up to date from both adding and subtracting people.

Switching between twitter platforms is easy
I’ve long managed my tweetdeck columns by promoting tweeters from my ‘all follower’ category to one of my various columns.  And it is this hard work of setting up a group that always prevented me from moving over to hootsuite.  The switching burden was more than I had time for.

But with twitter lists – I merely subscribe to the lists and the switching barrier from tweetdeck to hootsuite is disappearing.

Well there is.  My twitter lists tactics out in the open.  I could be right off my twitter rocker so tell me your thoughts and deep strategies.

Laurie Dillon-Schalk is the Chief Marketing Strategist and founder of Social Wisdom - a Toronto based digital marketing agency that helps firms and individuals use social media and the web wisely.

You can find Laurie on Twitter at twitter.com/Ldillonschalk or on her blog at Socialwisdom.ca

As part of our social efforts – we are ‘live blogging’, for a lack of a better term, mostly on Facebook and Twitter with twitpics, tweets, posts, videos and more throughout the festival.   At the risk of sounding like I’m blowing my own horn, Events 2.0 is bloody hard work making simple tweeting feel like a cookie next to a five tiered cake.

The obvious:

• Live event coverage using social media is requires full 12 – 16 hr dedication as majority of tweets are noon to late evening.
• Authors need strong freedom to engage and respond on a massive scale
• Multiple contributors are needed
• Authors need sleuthing skills to also find the conversations that are not following you.

The not so obvious:

1. Its not just about tweeting upcoming events or the schedule (which is major enough for a static display that changes frequently – errr).   More importantly, the focus has to include making the overall conversation of others heard.  That means sharing the twitpics of the masses, etc.  Admittedly, I am conscious of not wanting a ‘big brother’ feeling to come across but play a fine line of attentiveness.
2. Identifying communication bottlenecks and pushing the information out.  I believe this to be an advanced skill.  Looking at the operation of a business (in this case, an event) and figuring out how to apply the strengths of marketing vehicles against painful customer experiences.   For BuskerFest – the schedule is large, well managed and central in the festival – but there you have it.. it is not virtual.    I wish Social Wisdom (us) had been hired earlier so to have integrated our twitter addresses onto the physical signage at the event.
3. Don’t force the hashtag.  We created #bfto thinking it would be shorter, taking fewer characters and make retweeting easy.  But I can’t promote #BFTO enough.  The audience is naturally choosing the brand name of the festival – buskerfest – as its #buskerfest.    I actually tried to inform the first #buskerfest user but then I realized that is the collective – the wisdom of the crowd emerging.  Pretty cool actually.
4. Keep the thick skin.  We [the festival] got called ‘jackasses’  and given a #fail by @rjstewart as the website isn’t iphone compatible.  [i didn't do the site, the site has a lot of positives and honestly, as webby as I am - I wouldn't have thought about making it iphone compatible before April - when I got my own itouch]  [note to self - look up the penetration rates of various devices]  So @rjstewart – your tweet is fair enough and true – albeit a bit harsh.  But I do understand that very geek passion as I too love to pick at slow adoption and I know it is a comment that likely represents the frustration of more people.

I truly believe that the online behaviours and expectations of Canadians (and North Americans)  are on fire right now and firms are finding it very difficult to catch up.   As indication, Social Wisdom has been contacted by several different agencies who are suddenly seeing ‘social media’ as a key skill and experience needed in RFPs – it is a talent hole in many agencies.

As a last comment – the very ironic thing today was me sitting in Starbucks doing live event coverage while also sitting next to Epilepsy Toronto’s PR person.    First off, the PR person is a fantastic person – well connected and, quite clearly, managing a full load of traditional press coverage.   And she was busy writing up a press release for the world record that we facebooked about an hour earlier.   She was very pleasant about it  – asking if I could share some twitpics on the deal.   I then pulled up tweetdeck and was showing the stream of tweets and follower responses.  DW is great to work with – she was really embracing the social media and also thinking about how we could collaborate and integrate together.

At the same time – my team had tweeted about an upcoming interview not yet occurred – to which she questioned if that was appropriate [being very honest about not yet figuring out where the new lines are with social media - what to tweet and not tweet].  I didn’t know either so I deleted the tweets and could see some learning on both ends around the integration of pr/social media/marketing communications.

Well.. I best get some sleep.  I am looking forward to Saturday when I finally attend the festival as a mother and not in a virtual social capacity.

Note:

Sleep gave me a few more thoughts:

* How to better price for social media and also how to price for live event coverage.

* Technology needs on same day for events.