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.

Have you heard of Twitter? Do you know what it is? Do you use it?

I'm no early adopter (when it comes to Twitter), but I finally gave it a go over the last couple weeks. I had a Twitter account for a number of months, but I hadn't spent any time with it because I saw it as a source of constant interruptions and thus a productivity killer. Truth is, it can definitely be that. But it doesn't have to be. And it can be really useful and a lot of fun. I'm really enjoying it. It took me a while but I'm finally a Twitter fan.

If you do any marketing online, you should be up to speed on Twitter (what it is, what it's useful for). Twitter is so much more than just broadcasting in 140 characters or less what you're doing right now. And you should be tracking Twitter conversations that mention your brand (hint: use Twitter's "track" command/feature to do this). And perhaps you should be sending out your own messages (known as "tweets") too. As an online marketing channel, I think Twitter has potential -- though it's not necessarily appropriate for all businesses.

For Netconcepts' client and science guy Steve Spangler, for example, I think there's a good fit. As a toy inventor, TV personality, professional speaker, CEO, and science teacher, Steve leads a very interesting life and Twitter could offer a fun and fascinating window into his world (i.e. what he's inventing/teaching/thinking/performing). Every week Steve appears live on Denver's 9News to do a science experiment; that would make for great "Twitter fodder" -- as would the more noteworthy events leading up to the appearance (such as "Just bought 100 boxes of baking soda for tomorrow's science experiment on 9News")

The part of Twitter that can become a huge distraction / time-sink is where you actively follow the tweets of numerous individuals. So exercise caution when it comes to this next part... The "follow" command/feature lets you subscribe to the ongoing Twitter stream of requested Twitter users. You can even get those incoming tweets pushed at you via instant messenger or via TXT messages on your cell phone (but not both). This is easier than going to twitter.com in your web browser. You can TXT your Twitter updates, as well as commands like track and follow, to 40404 (an SMS short code). Once you're following people, it won't take long to discover who twitters too much; for your own sanity, you should probably drop those prolific twitterers like a hot potato.

You can also follow Twitter users through RSS using your favorite RSS newsreader if that's your preference. That doesn't really appeal to me; my newsreader (NetNewsWire for the Mac) overwhelms me enough already with the hundreds of feeds it's tracking.

My preferred way of interacting with twitter is through IM (instant messaging) rather than web or cell phone. You can set up your Twitter IM through Google Talk, which requires a Google/Gmail account. If you're on a Mac like I am, it works with both iChat and Adium. If you're not already using Google Talk, sign up for a Gmail account if you don't already have one, then set up Google Talk in your favorite IM program. For example, in iChat, go to Preferences, then under the Accounts tab, add a new account, choosing "Google Talk account" as the Account Type; iChat will then add a Jabber window with your GTalk account. Add your IM account and cell phone number to Twitter by going to the Settings link on the top right of the twitter.com home page (when logged in), then to the "Phone & IM" link. On your cell phone, you'll need to TXT the validation code you've been given to 40404. In your IM client, you'll need to send your validation code as an IM to the Google Talk account twitter@twitter.com. Once that's done, whatever you type to that IM account (or TXT to 40404) becomes your update -- unless you type a command to it like "follow sspencer". BTW, don't forget to also upload a picture of yourself so your followers can see your likeness.

Twitter is also great for those who go to conferences. I go to a TON of conferences. I decided to give Twitter a try while at the SMX West conference last month. It was pretty useful. I used it to follow the activities of other conference-goers and learn about parties and various other happenings. (IHOP anyone?!? -- that's an inside joke for those who attended SMX West and heard about the IHOP incident ;-)

Now, when I go to a conference, I send the word "on" to 40404 on my mobile phone, then all the tweets from everyone I follow (and from the keywords I track) come through on my cell phone. When I go to bed for the night, I send the word "off" so that the tweets don't wake me up.

So, all you non-Twitterers, try it out now... go to twitter.com and register. You can let people know what you're doing right now. Track keywords you have a keen interest in. Follow folks who interest you. If you'd like to follow me, my Twitter username is sspencer. If you want to follow Steve Spangler (which will also help motivate him to keep going with Twitter), his username is stevespangler. So in IM or via TXT, you'd send the command "follow sspencer" or "follow stevespangler." If you want to track discussions about a keyword, such as the SMX conference, send the command "track smx." When you mention someone with a Twitter account, use their username with an @ in front. For example "Checking out Twitter at the suggestion of @sspencer". Then the person mentioned will see your "tweet."

If you want to lean more about the benefits of using Twitter, check out this post from Tamar Weinberg. If you want to learn how to market on Twitter without spamming, check out this post from Jennifer Slegg .