I wanted to quickly give you some food for thought. The opportunities for large AND small businesses on Twitter are huge. Watch what Scott Monty from FORD says about their experience on Twitter in this Fox Business segment. Notice he says they are not interested in advertising on social networks like Twitter; rather it is about connecting with their target demographic on social networks like Twitter. This is a trend that is here to stay: customers are EXPECTING for your company to be on Twitter and have you interact with them.
I asked Scott via Twitter for 1 benefit of Twitter for Ford. He Tweeted this response.
My favorite quote from the video clip. Scott: “It is less about a campaign and more about a commitment… It is an ongoing way of doing business that we are going to see…”
Some of the Ford Twitter Accounts: Each account serves a specific purpose as a communication channel to address different market segments.
I was recently asked to present about Twitter for a digital marketing series of webinars by the cool people over at BrightTalk. They had 8 great presenters over the course of the day today talking about digital marketing, branding and measurement. So if you want to get your head around Twitter and the opportunities and benefits quickly in about 45 minutes; you can watch the replay of the webinar presentation that I did. Enjoy the recorded presentation and share it with your peers.
There has been a disturbing Dodo minded trend that I have seen in the past few months related to automated delivery of Direct Messages (DM) on Twitter. The trend is that when you follow someone they use a third party service to auto-follow anyone that follows them (not wise). As soon as they follow you, they send you a Direct Message that usually looks like this “Thanks for following me. See you in Twitterville” or something equally pointless, annoying and non value adding. The other type of message that we see look like this where they point to you to a link “Thanks for following me on Twitter. Make sure you read my blog at www.xzy.com” or “You gotta see this www.abc.com”.
These types of Automated Direct Messages are frustrating to the large majority of Twitter users because they add no value and these messages start to feel like more junk in my Twitter “inbox” that I need to delete.
Telling me via an automated DM to check out your blog and giving me a link feels a bit like a hard sell; and by the way I already went to your blog (while looking at your profile on twitter) before I decided to follow you. It is insulting, annoying, a poor practice and actually reflects badly on the person sending the auto DM. Many people will actually choose to unfollow anyone that sends them an auto DM (myself included). Sending these non value added Auto Direct Messages shows lack of knowledge of the eco-system and some of the informal behavioral rules that exist on Twitter.
Best Practice: There are only rare exceptions where Automated DM could be percieved as valuable. If you are not sure if your use is the rare exception; most likely it is not.
Tip: Your first Direct Message to someone better add value as you get 1 chance to make a first impression.
Marketers like to be heard and want to “make people” pay attention. One of the really nice things about Twitter is the control is with the users; if I don’t want to hear your marketing messages, I simply unfollow or block you and you have lost the ability to communicate with me. Marketers can’t make people do anything on Twitter.
Tip: Focus on building trust, adding value and beginning a relationship first.
So let’s just hope that the non value adding Automated Direct Messages on Twitter will soon go the way of the Dodo bird and become extinct. You can follow me at www.twitter.com/rumford
I heard of this plane crash from my wife as she got delayed and did not hop her flight to CT. She told me a plane had just crashed (I was reading a book). I hopped on Twitter only to become horrified to learn of the details as they unfolded on twitter right before my eyes. I used to work for a company in Clarence Center. I love the people of this tight knit community and have always had a soft spot for them and flew in there regularly for many years.
My point in this blog post is to show an example of how Twitter is in fact a communication channel that people use for news discovery, sharing and adding value and changing the experience of this tragedy. I immediately relayed all info related to emergency efforts and helping the families. I wanted to help spread as much helpful information to as many people as possible quickly.
I immediately became immersed and went to find the exact location of the crash on street level view via asking people on twitter if they knew the location; and someone on twitter responded within minutes. The crash site was about 1.5 miles from a company I worked for many years ago. Click on the map and you can “drive” down the road where the plane crash occurred.
I also discovered via twitter a live stream from the local buffalo TV news station and still have it on at 2am pacific time. My life is changed by social media and how I communicate, share and experience events is forever changed. Additionally, it is yet another example of how the news business is leveraging the communication channel of Twitter to listen, discover and share. Social Communication Channels are not a fad. This one is here to stay.
In closing, my heart and prayers go out to the friends and families of loved ones that were lost. I still do not know if there is anyone I knew on the plane at this time. You can go to donate and help the families of this horrific tragedy on Kieth Burris Bloghttp://keithburtis.com
I have been using Twitter for over 2 years and I sometimes forget that people do not see all of the uses and functionality of Twitter. So I wanted to ask a simple question and not skew the data with my reasons for asking this question. Please take the Survey: How often do you favorite a tweet?
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Please feel free to share this and Retweet. Thanks for your attention.
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Being that it is Superbowl Sunday you can expect that many people will be using Twitter as a communication channel as people share updates about the game, festivities and the Superbowl commercials. The NFL has a prime opportunity as this is the worlds largest televised sporting event watched around the world.
The NFL has a Twitter account as well as a Twitter Superbowl 43 account. You can see the updates that they are publishing on their Superbowl website. It would appear that they are simply publishing updates at a very infrequent rate. It is Superbowl Sunday morning as I write this and there has not been a post in over 12 hours, which sort of misses the point and where they have an opportunity to create enhanced brand value.
They are trying to make the Twitter content on the event site more formalized. Which misses the point of immediacy and conversant tweets. I will say it is step in the right direction, but the execution misses a lot. They might be much better served to display on the website what all the FANS are saying about the game. This then acts as a true lens into the football audience and what they are doing, thinking and sharing. They could have taken an idea I had months ago; which is setting up a team of Superbowl Tweeters who could have been at the game and all the pregame festivities who could group twitter and share photos, videos and it would feel much more intimate. It is important to note that they have only 2390 followers on Twitter which means they have not promoted this channel at all. In fact it is pretty well hidden and only an edge person like myself tracked it down, and I had to hunt to find it.
Business advertisers are spending north of 3.5 million dollars per 30 second advertisement to reach the audience, create buzz, drive brand awareness and sales. As everyone gathers around the water cooler on Monday people will be discussing their favorite superbowl ads. Many of these ads actually will drive large amounts of online traffic as people go online and make the cross from broadcast television to online engagement. We will see some cross channel promotion as some of these advertisers have a presence on Twitter to continue the engagement and conversation after these Ad spots. You can follow the Twitter conversations regarding the Superbowl Ads at #superads09
I do know of one Superbowl advertiser that is doing something very interesting around Twitter: H&R Block. They have a very interesting Ad spot which features Murray the Tax preparer and they have extended the character and given him a presence on Twitter. You can follow Murray the Tax Guy on Twitter here.
I think the important ideas for brands to take away is that and H & R Block has done an excellent job with these areas for distribution, awareness, consumption and engagement. A few key points:
* Extend the Superbowl beyond a 30 second spot by integrating across all marketing channels. They will be incorporating across the HRblock.com homepage, Youtube brand channel, Myspace brand channel and Facebook brand channel and all will be integrating the Superbowl spot after it airs today.
* Enable two-way dialog by being active on Twitter and having multiple brand channels open. Murray is a character extension that will be a little fun to see how the rest of the story of the ad plays out.
* All of their channels are open for customer dialog; which is where they do an excellent job in execution and engagement.
This is my personal favorite Tweet from Murray thus far…
Being that it is Superbowl Sunday you can expect that many people will be using Twitter as a communication channel as people share updates about the game, festivities and the Superbowl commercials. The NFL has a prime opportunity as this is the worlds largest televised sporting event watched around the world.
I do know of one Superbowl advertiser that is doing something very interesting around Twitter: 
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