The Marketing Tweet Spot? | Is Twitter the next killer app?

Unless you have been out to lunch for a while, you’ve probably heard the buzz about the micro blogging site Twitter.com. The new style of networking for todays incredibly well connected but fragmented whole of social media. The question on every marketeers lips? .. What will I say?

It’s a fair question; and the only one logical, considering the fact that you’ve already answered the little question: Is Twitter worth anything to my business? Do you know the name as well as you know the Walmart name? If you answered yes; then you know that getting a piece of that could buy you some serious toys. Game on?

Dell made in excess of a million dollars last year. Perhaps you aren’t Dell, but shouldn’t you own your brand in any place that people can search and interact?

Step 2: Think about what you want to say. Knowing the difference between broadcasting and Engaging is important. Your audience must be participating. Questions to ask yourself: What will most of my audience have in common with me? May want to tweet about that, right? .. What are the people in my target audience searching for to find me? The most valuable tool in creating your presence is to calculatingly, and methodically sift through every scenario in where your customers acquire your contact information.

Once you have a few good 140 character quips, give it a shot. If you update twice a week, you’ll be doing more than 70% of your competition. Users used to, and still do, judge a business by it’s site, but also it’s facebook, myspace, twitter and linkedin. But how crazy you go on it is really up to you. At some point this really does become a logical entry point for a marketing department. But you can sure give it a boost by getting started! So go!!… If you haven’t. And come back here to tell the tale as well.

Happy Tweeting!

Where is the entertainment? Where is the marketing?

I happened to have some issues with my wireless, and my video was doing that “choppy” thing. You know.. Well what red blooded male could help but notice that the camera angle of this shot is virtually straight up starlet Dianna Agron’s skirt? But interestingly enough, I noticed another interesting thing.

Curious by nature. What can I say for myself? But where does the advertising begin and end? The answer? Maybe it’s a mixture. I propose that anyone subjected to the same level of daily marketing a US citizen is, cannot entirely be removed from that advertising suddenly without at least a distorted feel to their environment without it. I would speculate also that the viewer would not be as deeply engaged in entertainment, sans strategic product placement.

Entertainment needs brands that exist in the real world to work and visually make our brains think that what we are watching is real. I think that it is a vital component to the depth at which we are able to be engaged. Now we are so desensitized to product placement in entertainment that we wouldn’t feel like a movie were even real without them.

Although I’m pretty sure that the sex appeal wasn’t lost on you by now; what may have escaped your notice is that in this picture there is a great example of brilliant product placement. The iPhone and iPod are everywhere. Burrowing their way into our subconscious. Like we experience the heightened sense of awareness…

The product-saturation of the entertainment market was probably one of the most effective takeovers in marketing and product placement marketing I’ve ever seen? Sex sells and Apple knows it., Clearly. Coupling up with the major sources of entertainment was a great trick. One I wish I could duplicate.. But don’t we all?

Social marketing perspective – Don’t look like a nube… even if you are

Are you falling into the time vrs. result shortfalls of standard social media marketing? If you think that your results are hardly worth the effort… you might be right.Then again, perhaps you just need to re-think the global landscape. Maybe you’re not really thinking about the leverage social media can give you on a large scale.

What is the value of twitter vrs. facebook? Can you put a price tag on your followers? Hopefully you have some kind of position on these two things. But if you are like most, you surely fall either on the “I love it and I can’t live without it” or the “I don’t see the point” side of things. I know this, because when you begin to understand how social media and one to many communication work… and you’re a marketeer… you become quite excited… even if (like me) previously, you were completely uninvolved and uninterested.

The value to you in social media will directly be related to your ability to add value for your users. Think about what your value proposition is before creating your message. When you go to execute and deliver your message, be sure that the value proposition and call to action make sense in context and are compelling. There is nothing worse than miss-communication and confusion. Avoid confusing your audience at every cost. Be clear with your message and  pick a direction!

Set up repetitive tasks to auto-execute with automatic replies and auto-follows on Twitter. Once you start getting 50-100 a day it will save your life. You can also use most of the software that is out there for this to manage multiple accounts and make posting schedules with pre-created messages. Way cool!

If you aren’t a graphic designer… find one please. Make your space or profile custom and create a strong visual identity. This means changing the background, icon, links, about me content ect. Very important stuff. Don’t be cheap with the details! This is a great chance to raise yourself above maybe 60% of the competition!

Make a plan. Failing to plan is planning to fail! Write it down, set benchmarks and dedicate yourself to success. It’s the only way to make this work. And one more thing. You had either better love your brand and be extremely knowledgeable about it’s entire universe or have access to a great data stream.. The devil is in the details!

Now let the flurry of custom link tracking, targeting message sculpting, tweeting and poking begin! Enjoy your foray into the world of social media marketing.. It’s still supposed to be fun!