It's hard enough presenting in front of an audience of a dozens or hundreds of your peers, let alone to be paying attention to what's happening on Twitter at the same time. But that's exactly what a good presenter or good moderator needs to do these days. Particularly if you're presenting to a tech-savvy audience.

Checking for real-time online feedback on your session is called "monitoring the backchannel." One of the most famous recent incidents where a speaker should have monitored the back channel but didn't was Sarah Lacy's interview of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg at the South by Southwest conference this year. That session went very pear-shaped for Sarah as she pursued lines of questioning that frustrated and aggravated the audience. Sarah was blissfully ignorant as the audience began to turn on her.

That thankfully hasn't happened to me (yet). But I did get a reminder that the audience is twittering about you while you're on stage. Last week when I presented at the SEOmoz Expert Training intensive, I preceded Danny Sullivan. He was sitting in the audience during my session. I was doing a solo presentation, so I didn't have time to check the back channel. After I was finished, I saw that I suddenly had dozens of new Twitter followers. That was a surprise. "What the heck happened?" I thought to myself. I found the answer soon enough. It was all instigated by Danny's tweets about me:

watching @sspencer explain new loophole for shooting to the top of google rankings in one day. amazing stuff, wow. 01:34 PM August 20, 2008 from twhirl

@mattcutts just joshing. @sspencer is being very good, doing amazing job talking about vertical search and seo opps and tactics 01:34 PM August 20, 2008 from twhirl in reply to mattcutts

@presellpageman @sspencer is presenting at the seomoz.org training seminar. i was ses yesterday; seomoz today; gnomedex on friday. busy week 01:39 PM August 20, 2008 from twhirl in reply to PresellPageMan

If only I were better at multitasking while presenting, I'd have picked up on this and worked some funny quips about it into my presentation.

I remember from Dan Lyons' (Fake Steve Jobs') keynote at Web 2.0 Expo he was poking fun at Robert Scoble's suggestion that speakers take a "Twitter break" every 10 minutes or so to keep on top of the backchannel. It's actually not a bad suggestion, although it may not be for everybody (such as Dan Lyons, for instance!).

I had the pleasure of interviewing via email Tony Hsieh, the CEO of online shoe retailer Zappos.com, for an article I wrote for the August issue of Multichannel Merchant. Zappos is a real innovator among online retailers in a lot of areas, not the least of which is social media. They have taken Twitter by storm, with 440 twittering employees - including their CEO (Tony) and their COO (Alfred). They even launched a microsite dedicated to their Twitter presence.

I thought it would be interesting to share the interview with you here. The final article is now online, so be sure to check that out too.

Stephan: Can you share a bit of background about you and Zappos, and how the company culture plays into your inclination to jump headfirst into new online marketing channels? What were your objectives in entering the Twitterverse? twitter.zappos.com from a social media standpoint is pretty impressive and in the corporate world a rather unheard of large-scale embracing of Twitter. What is the big picture idea behind this / how did this come about?

Tony: Background on the company is here. My bio is here. You can get a glimpse inside our company culture here.

Our #1 priority as a company is our company culture. We believe that if we get the culture right, most of the other stuff, including great customer service, will fall into place on its own. Long term, we want the Zappos brand to be about the very best customer service and the very best customer experience.

For Twitter, we don't really view it as a marketing channel so much as a way to connect on a more personal level, whether it's with our employees or our existing customers.

Initially, we started getting the entire company more involved with Twitter because we saw it as a great way to help build our company culture. But then we discovered it was also a great way to connect with
customers as well.

Stephan: Are you viewing this as an experiment to be evaluated over some trial period or are you committed to engaging with customers via Twitter over the long term?

Tony: We are committed to connecting with our customers on a personal level. The telephone is actually a really great way to do this, which is why we have our 1-800 number at the top of every page of our web site. We found that Twitter is another great way to do this, and if something else comes along in the future, then we would definitely explore that as well.

Stephan: How are Zappos employees using Twitter? Is there any competitive aspect amongst employees about follower acquisition? Is there an overarching theme to their tweets or are they just twittering about their cats? Do they twitter about Zappos products and blog posts? What's the level of supervision of them in their twittering? e.g. any employee guidelines for twittering? and are they trained? How do they know not to pose as a random consumer and post pro-Zappos tweets while hiding their corporate employee status? What would an employee have to tweet to get fired? What's the procedure for employees handling tweets directed directly at them from customers?

Tony: We do offer Twitter classes, but those are optional and are more for employees to learn how to sign up for Twitter and use various features and third party applications. We really don't give any specific guidelines except to tell them to use their best judgement.

It's up to employees what they want to Twitter about. As I mentioned earlier, the primary focus was to get employees to connect with each other, so the vast majority of the posts are about their personal lives.

In terms of what an employee would have to tweet in order to get fired, it would be if they did something that was not consistent with our core values, which are here.

But this is not twitter-specific: If an employee does anything that's not consistent with our core values, whether through twitter, telephone, or in person, then we need to consider whether that employee is Zappos material for the long term.

We currently don't have any standard procedures for responding to tweets from customers.

Stephan: What (if any) kind of ROI are you seeing by having your employees spend time being active on Twitter? What are your success metrics?

Tony: We're not really looking at short-term ROI in terms of sales. We're looking to form life-long relationships with our customers, and we think Twitter helps us do this.

However, we've also found that Twitter has been great for recruiting because people can get a glimpse into what our culture is like just by observing how we interact with each other on Twitter.

Stephan: What's the response from customers been? What was the response to your tweet asking for feedback to the idea of a zappos.org site that donates a percentage of the revenue to charity? Have you heard if any of your mentions of companies/products/restaurants resulted in an increase in sales for what you've endorsed?

Tony: The customers that are following @zappos on Twitter seem to really enjoy it because it allows them to interact with us on a much more personal level. I've heard anecdotally of people buying from us because of our Twitter presence, but as I mentioned earlier, we're not really looking at the short term ROI.

Stephan: Has Zappos embraced or have plans to embrace any other social networks on such a large scale? Digg? Propeller? Etc?

Tony: Not at this time.

Stephan: Could you describe some of the contests you've been conducting over Twitter and how successful you feel they've been? Any big plans for upcoming Twitter contests?

Tony: We don't have a formal contest plan or program.

Stephan: Have you considered Twitter as a customer service tool to crowd-source customer questions and set up an employee guru status where employees get points for answering customers' questions effectively?

Tony: Not at this time.

Stephan: You seem very open in sharing what you're doing and where you're going at any given moment. Do you feel too exposed sometimes by being so open? Do you fear making some statements on Twitter that might come back to haunt you in some way?

Tony: Almost any statement that's taken out of context can be interpreted negatively. But part of the beauty of Twitter is that you can see what we have all been doing over time and make your own judgement on what you think of Zappos based on the sum total of everything, not a single tweet.

Stephan: Do you randomly twitter stuff, or do you try to schedule entries consistently?

Tony: I think it's important to be authentic, so I don't have a schedule. I'll tweet if I feel like it, and I won't if I don't.

Stephan: What would be your advice to other CEOs out there who would like to try twittering?

Tony: Just be real and use it as a way to connect more deeply with people. Don't think of it as a marketing tool you have to leverage. And you actually have to be passionate about twittering or it's not going to work. So if you're not passionate about it, then don't do it.

When you sign up for just about any social network, you have the option to upload an image that will represent you. No matter what the social site, you'll want to associate an image with your online identify. This image is your "avatar." It's your online persona. It's the way the online community will see you. With it, your profile appears more real, more tangible, more human. A good avatar will help people relate to you as a fellow human being, to take notice of you, to remember you, and to listen to what you have to say.

Sure, you could choose not to upload an image, but why would you? Then you'd be a faceless user that no one remembers or identifies with - making gaining traction in the network much more difficult.

You don't want to blend into the woodwork and be ignored, right?

Choosing your avatar doesn’t need to be difficult. Your image can be a simple picture of your face or just of something you like or identify with. Using the same avatar on many social networks helps brand you and helps people remember who you are. When people recognize your avatar across many platforms, they are more likely to want to be your friend and vote for your story submissions.

What avatar do I use? It depends. If it's a persona that I don't want necessarily tied to me / my company, then I go for an illustration - something distinctive. (No I'm not going to show any of them to you here.) If the profile is one I've associated with my own name, then I use this headshot photo of me:

When anyone first gets into social media, on any site, there is one thing they all notice quickly – there are power users. Power users are the ones who submit a ton of stuff, comment on everything, have hundreds if not thousands of friends and followers. To someone just diving into the world, it’s rather intimidating. How can you compete with that?

This is the wrong question to ask. What you should be asking yourself is how are you going to network with these power users. Sure you could just be their “friend” and vote their stories up… but that isn’t going to get you noticed and it for sure isn’t going to put you in a position to ask them for favors. To the new user these power users are “famous” and what happens is the new user doesn’t try and connect – they don’t think they can. They see these power users as unreachable.

The truth of the matter is these power users got to where they are, have tons of friends and followers, because they are social people. Some of the nicest people in the world are the power users of social media sites. As I have said before, social media is about being social – not anti-social.

If you’re just starting out on a new network, give it a try – reach out to the big guys and get yourself noticed. You might just be surprised by the results.

When you use any social media outlet, one of the major hurdles is making friends. How you go about making friends will make or break your reputation on whichever service you are on. One of the best ways of making real friends and connections through social media is using instant messaging.

You can find users AIM/MSN/Yahoo names generally in their profiles and can start sending them messages instantly. They have their usernames listed so people can find and talk with them. They do not have them listed to just be spammed with “vote for this please, thanks” messages. If they don’t know you, why would they vote you up just because you asked them?

A good way to go about first contact with anyone on a social site is to be genuinely interested in them. After the initial "Hello I found you through X," ask them about their latest blog post or what they thought about something you saw they voted up or down. Ask them about their business, what they do, what they are interested in, how they got their start.

I chat with people every day and when someone is actually interested in what I do (or at least seems that way) I’m more likely to be interested in them. I’ll take a look at their profile on whatever social site they found me though and maybe check out their blog or website. When people just spam me with “vote for” or try and start a conversation without introducing themselves and just looking for free tips – I ignore them.

(Unless you're a Trekkie like me, you may not fully appreciate this post's title... "First Contact" is a reference to the first time Earth's inhabitants made contact with aliens, specifically the Vulcans.)

Social networking is all about being social and networking - duh The question is: How do you do this; what does that mean? It means being active in the community; it’s saying thanks to people who vote your stories up; it’s responding to comments on your blog; it’s posting comments on other folks' blogs. It’s starting topics of conversation and being a part of other conversations.

Be careful though, it is very easy to destroy your online reputation by being a jerk, so watch what you say. Don’t just go and type in your gut reaction to things like you would if you were having a conversation with someone. The same care and attention in crafting responses is required in social networks as in email, since the emotional cues that are present in in-person and over-the-phone interactions are missing in online communications. You have all the time in the world to make your communications and your online persona funny, witty, insightful, thoughtful, ingenious. So take that time. Ultimately, however, your true character is going to shine through - but this is a good thing!

Being honest and open with people is what will net you real friends – friends that if you happen to be in the same city will buy you a drink, show you around, or even put a good word in for you if you’re looking for a job. It’s these kind of real social media friends that will bend over backwards to help you out if they can. If you’re a freelancer or a business owner, they might even recommend you to people they know.

Just by being yourself in social networks you’ll find that you are making friends with people of similar interests and humor types – people with similar personalities that actually like YOU and not just your online presence.