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!

Oh the Wonders of Widgets: How to Make and Bake a Widget

Okay so there is a wealth of information out there about 2.0 and social media, but what does it really mean to the brand? What is a widget and where should you begin?

Well first thing is first. I hope to help those of you that are looking at social media as a tool to market your brand or biz find your way through Perfspots’ new application and widget functionality. http://www.perfspot.com/apps is the address of our newly launched application gallery and is probably the best way to kick off this conversation if you already have a rudimentary understanding of the Perfspot profile (or “Perflife”.) If you don’t have a profile and if you haven’t already been around the site enjoying the various features and functions then I strongly recommend you do so before continuing.

I will take this opportunity to tell you that a widget is basically a mini web page. Usually made in flash for this application, it is best known for doing one thing well. Some widgets tell the time. Some simply count down to an event. My favorite widgets though are the ones that let me click around and see videos, take polls, register to win a contest, update me about my favorite content and are entertaining. To give you an example; I have the Madonna widget installed on my profile because I am a fan and I think everyone that visits my profile should get to see just how cool her new video is. I also like the ESPN widget which keeps me up to date on my own terms with all the current events I should know about. You may also like the Techcrunch widget or the James Bond widget… You get the idea. (or if you need a little help you can visit my Perflife at http://www.perfspot.com/internationalsales where even my blog is a widget.)

Now lets talk about how to make a widget. If you aren’t a professional coder don’t worry. Tools are out there to make your life easier like Sproutbuilder.com and Wix.com to name a couple. For the more analytically inclined professional user you can register at Clearspring.com and look forward to the most advanced widget analytics on the planet (visit head of analytics Jodi Mcdermott’s blog here http://widgetanalytics.wordpress.com .) I also like the professional tool set that Musestorm offers advanced users. The functionality you include will be limited by your experience or your learning curve, but you should be able to spin out a nominally good widget within 20 minutes that is fully sharable on all of your favorite social networking sites.

How is the widget shared? How can I tap in to the viral loop? Let’s answer these questions next. Some widget companies such as Splashcast prefer to make their own sharing tool for reasons that mystify me, however most other widget designers use either the Clearspring “Launchpad” sharing tool or Gigyas’ “Wildfire” Sharing tool to help the social community members “grab” or install the widget to their own pages. So I’m a user and I see a widget that I want for my page right? I press “Grab it” on the widget and a list of icons and names come up on a small menu that allows me to choose where I would like to place my widget. Let’s just take Perfspot for example (imagine that). I enter my login information, choose whether I want my widget publicly displayed on my profile or privately placed on my “dashboard” where only I can see it. Then Voila, I have installed a cool new widget to my profile (which I check every day) and I can go play with it right away!

It’s not hard to suppose how a really good widget can go viral almost overnight this way. If a widget has a great perceived value for the users and starts building some momentum it gets something I like to call “Spin”. You can either buy spin or work really hard for it but the end result is basically the same. The only difference is that you don’t have to pay for popularity if you make something that the users really love. If you put a lot of hard work into making your widget popular you just might see the gold at the end of the widget rainbow. Depending on how high the adoption rate is and how fast it spreads you might just end up with hundreds of thousands of little billboards across social media we call widgets!

Adventures in Marketing – More comments from the peanut gallery

As a little background about Perfspot.com for those of you that may not know. The site is a social network based in Scottsdale Arizona and visited religiously by its members in more than 130 countries. The site was published in March of 2007 and has exploded. Experiencing 756% growth world wide and achieving a top Alexa rank of 66, Perfspot was the worlds fastest growing social media property in 2007. Perfspot now serves more than 7 million members and 30 million unique page-views monthly.

Please allow me to introduce myself. I am the Senior International Media Executive with Perfspot.com. We are a group of creative individuals comming together and working to make an exciting and engaging space online. Our goal is to create the “Perf” spot to hang with friends, discover new worlds and build your own.

I have the distinguished opportunity to receive a continuing education second to none in social media and the opportunity to aid marketing professionals to engaging their users and achieving campaign objectives with entertaining content. It is safe to say that I have a very fun and rewarding job.

The main stay of online marketing has been banner advertising and search for decades. Today’s advertising, however is forging new paths into more innovative outlets. Forays into viral video, widgets and social media marketing are becoming less experimental and more acceptable as they become more measurable. It is now common place for a socially accepted brand to have multiple business profiles with varrying levels of user interaction. Big business has even turned to social media for user generated comercials on radio and T.V.

Social networks like Perfspot are realising the true potential that exists for branding and a whole new kind of direct responce. The holy grail of marketing comes down to action, in social media we call it… engagement. Through new developments in technology, marketing online is becoming a truly amazing place; and best of all from a marketing perspective.. it’s measurable. Quantifiable results make honing in on the verticals, channels and sites that really make an impact on a campaign easier and faster than ever.