It seems that every day a new article (or blog post) comes out about how brands are using Twitter wrong. This article from yesterday delivers this message in a typical way – saying that Twitter consists “primarily of two-way conversations – marketers can be doing so much more to participate fully in this two way medium” (and the Twitter whitepaper it links to is fairly interesting). Marketers are being told to engage and converse – and to do so quite frequently.

But I have a different perspective, and believe that many brands (and companies) can succeed on Twitter without necessarily engaging in conversations, or being particularly active. Not only that, but I believe the hypothesis that customers necessarily want to be engaged in conversations with brands needs to be challenged, as I don’t think it’s true as a blanket statement.

I’ve been doing a lot of research on this recently, but today I’ll just provide a few different Twitter accounts that appear to be doing very well, in terms of followers, without engaging in conversations (or doing any of the other things most people are recommending they “should” do on Twitter).

@woot:  A quick glance at their Twitter page reveals they typically post once a day (occasionally 2 or 3 times). This post is a link to a daily deal. There is simply no conversation or two-way engagement. They have over 1.6 million followers (#90 overall, between Biz Stone and Penn Gillette), and have been listed 7,000 + times. This makes woot one of the most popular brand accounts on Twitter (out of companies that actually sell stuff).

@zappos: this account is operated by CEO Tony Hsieh, and Zappos is frequently mentioned as one of the leading companies in delivering compelling customer experiences, and engaging in social media. But if you look at his actual activity, there are few signs of conversation to be found. It’s mostly some quotes he finds interesting, a few links, and some seemingly random thoughts. He also doesn’t post that often – less than once a day. He has over 1.7 million followers (#72 overall, between inStyle and Serena Williams), and has been listed almost 10,000 times.

@mashable: Mashable is the online guide to social media. If anyone was to be using Twitter “correctly”, you think it would be them – and this account is run by Pete Cashmore, the CEO. It is popular – @mashable has over 2 million followers (#45 overall, between Pete Wentz and Mandy Moore), and has been listed almost 50,000 times. But again, just look at the activity – a continuous series of links to various articles. More active then the two examples above, yes – but conversational, absolutely not.

You might think I just cherry picked these examples, and that they are the exception to the rule. But I didn’t – there are many more examples where these came from. And as for the rule, well, I think the rule is wrong.

That social media can be used to engage in conversations is absolutely true, and many people and companies are doing that effectively. I don’t dispute that. But somewhere along the way, there seems to have been a near consensus emerge that:

a) two-way conversations is the only way to use Twitter.

b) two-way conversations is what every customer wants on Twitter.

I don’t believe it. The fact that so many people seem to be interested in so many accounts that do the exact opposite is rather telling on this front. And as more and more people engage on Twitter (and other platforms), and create more and more connections, with the potential for more and more messages, I truly believe we’re going to see more and more people realize that “conversations” isn’t what it’s all about.

As part of my ongoing research, I’ve been paying close attention to developments around Twitter’s “list” feature (launched in October) – “A great way to organize the people you follow and discover new and interesting accounts.” Yesterday I stumbled upon an interesting finding (that has me scratching my ahead a bit) in relation to follower vs. list counts as a measure of popularity.

One would think that there would be a very high correlation between the two – if a lot of people follow you, you are likely to make a lot of lists. While I haven’t actually run a regression to prove that, as I’ve looked around it generally seems like a fairly safe assumption. But there’s one interesting anomaly I’ve found recently – @Marvel vs. @Agent_M.

@Marvel is “the official Twitter for Marvel Comics, Movies, Games and More.” Agent_M is the “editor for Marvel.com. Writer, blogger, loves tacos, tattoos, comics…” I’ve been watching these two accounts with interest for some time, because the former has about 43 thousand followers, and the latter has about 1.4 million. This would seem to say something important about relative popularity, and it’s interesting when the editor is more widely followed than the content.

But the “list” count tells a slightly different story. @Marvel has been added to 1,467 lists, while @Agent_M has been added to 1,234. So even though Agent_M has 0ver 30 times more followers, his account has been added to fewer lists. Divide lists Marvel is on by total followers you get 3.4%; for Agent_M you get 0.1%. ; Why is that? And what does it mean?

I have a few ideas (that basically amount to pure speculation), but there’s one other wrinkle I’d like to throw in here from my previous research. Regular readers have heard me talk about the Twitter brand engagement matrix before (see here, here, here, here, and here). The basic idea is to differentiate between brand and personality centric accounts, and broadcasting vs. conversational strategies, by using a 2 by 2 matrix. It looks like this (with a few examples thrown in):

The general message (as each of the examples represents) is you can have success from each of the quadrants. In this case, @Agent_M is squarely in the personality / conversational quadrant (upper right). @Marvel is squarely in brand /broadcast quadrant (lower left). Two diametrically opposed approaches, with two very different results.

So in this case, the personality / conversational approach has proven far more effective at attracting followers – a sign of popularity. But the brand / broadcast approach has proven far more effective (on a relative basis) at making it onto lists – a different sign of popularity. So why? Is it a different type of person that follows the different type of accounts? Does it indicate that a higher proportion of @Marvel’s followers are actually interested – and perhaps a significant chunk of Agent_M’s aren’t paying attention? What exactly is it about the type of content @Marvel posts that makes it more likely to crack lists?

Can’t claim to have the answer (at least not yet ). But I think there are some interesting questions here that I will be paying attention to…

Back in March I wrote about a potential framework for how different brands use Twitter. It’s a simple 2 x 2 matrix. On the X-axis I separate out brand and personality centric accounts – basically whether it’s a “real” human or a company / logo. On the Y-axis I separate out broadcast and conversation centric accounts, using “% of @reply messages” as a proxy for conversational activity.

I’ve continued to use this as high-level lens for looking at how companies are using Twitter, and I find it very useful. One of the main messages that derives from repeatedly doing the analysis is that while many people argue the RIGHT way to use social media is to have people-driven conversations, I believe that there are merits to each of the four approaches. To that point, today I thought I’d cover four different accounts that are the “main” faces of different brands on Twitter – each with over 1 million Twitter followers, and each residing in a different quadrant of the matrix. These four are @WholeFoods, @padmasree, @zappos, and @woot.

@Wholefoods: I’ve talked about Whole Food’s presence on Twitter before (including all the different accounts they use, scattered all over the matrix), and it really is a remarkable story. At last count the main account has over 1.4 million followers, good for the #43 spot on the Twitterholic rankings. It’s obviously a branded account – company logo, providing “fresh organic tweets from Whole Foods Market HQ in Austin TX.” And if you scan the messages, you’ll quickly see what I mean by it being conversational – almost every single message is an @reply to someone. Great example of how you don’t necessarily need a “human face” to have a conversation. @JetBlue is another great example of this – though they do provide 5 names in the bio.

@Woot: I mentioned Woot.com recently as an example of a company using Twitter for nothing more than broadcasting sales messages – one tweet a day, highlighting the daily product that’s on offer. Many people seem to argue this is totally the wrong way to use Twitter, but at last count they had just under 1.4 million followers, good for #53 in Twitterholic. In short, broadcasting sales messages can work in certain circumstances. @amazonmp3 is another great example.

@padmasree: I stumbled upon this account when pulling together a customer Twitter presentation for Cisco a few weeks ago. For those that don’t know her, she is the CTO of Cisco – and has 1.1 million followers, far more than any other Cisco account, good for #112 on Twitterholic. Scan her account, and you can see how incredibly active – and conversational – she is. @Agent_M (comic writer for Marvel) is another great example here.

@Zappos: Zappos – rightfully – gets a lot of press about their effective use of social media across the enterprise. But there are a few things I rarely see noted. First, the main account is handled by the CEO (Tony Heish), and it has FAR more followers than all of the other Zappos accounts combined (1.4 million, good for #51 on Twitterholic) . Second, he only updates it a couple of times a day, and when he does it’s generally to broadcast a particular piece of information (a quote, a picture, what he ate – whatever). It clearly stands out from the far more conversational accounts like @padmasree, @chrisbrogan, etc. While far more active, @mashable uses it’s main account in a similar, broadcast type way.

So there you go – four different accounts that are the “main face” of different companies on Twitter, and each is extremely successful. Which approach is right for the main face of your company, and all the other accounts that might be affiliated with it, all depends on two big questions – what your customers want, and what makes sense for your value proposition.

“There are management consulting firms that charge really high rates. We wanted to come up with something that’s accessible to almost any business.”

This quote will ring true for many different people that have employed management consulting firms. In the worst cases, it appears that certain types of such companies merely send people in to work at company X for awhile, learn everything they are up to, and then go to company Y (& Z, etc.), looking to sell their insights for a stunningly high amount. Wikinomics and the “age of transparency” is clearly a direct threat to that model, and where this quote comes from is a remarkably good example of why.

The quote is from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, as reported in this AdWeek article. For many years companies have been invited to trek down to Las Vegas and check out how the company does business. Now, companies that don’t want to make such a trek (travel freeze anyone?) have another option to learn a thing or two about Zappos – pay $39.95 per month for a subscription to the forthcoming Zappos Insights, a subscription video service that lets companies ask questions about the Zappos way and get answers from actual Zappos employees. At such a price point, it’s easy to see why the company is targeting the “Fortune 1 Million”, instead of a much smaller range of targets.

It will be interesting to see how this service plays out when it officially launches (I learned about it from this mashable post, where a number of people were complaining about not being able to sign in, and Tony Hsieh chimed in to note they didn’t realize the Adweek article was going up so soon, so the site has been shut down until the official launch). But regardless of whether it turns out to be a bit gimmicky or not, it should at least provide people a reminder of the intense pressure certain business models are under as certain wikinomics principles continue to gain traction – yellow pages anyone?