Promoting an event with tight timescales might seem like a tough challenge, but using sites such as eventbrite, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs together can push the message out. (more…)
Tag Archives: Twitter
Twitter / Blog / Facebook – Should you use the Royal ‘We’ or ‘I’
This is a tricky one which I come across a lot of the time and thought it was worth a discussion.
When sending out tweets / facebook – should you use ‘we’ or ‘I’. (more…)
Life without Twitter or Blogging for a month – How did I get on
For the month of May I decided to see how I could manage without blogging and twittering to see how life was before I got involved.
I initially had some extra time which I used up focusing on client work. After the initial week, I began to feel out of touch with what was going on. Not only with my peers and friends, but in the digital world, as I get a lot of news from Twitter.
Waterstones inspiring use of Twitter
I was on Twitter on New Years Eve afternoon and saw this tweet come through on the Waterstones account:
who’s in my flock – tracking digital brand
When you think about your personal online / digital brand – what are the core messages that you want to get across? (more…)
Twitter spam – it hasn’t taken long
Did you know that 95% of email is spam, that’s an incredible percentage. I truly hate spam and phishing is even worse.
So when I logged into Twitterfox and looked at my messages I was intrigued to see that I had 2 messages from people who were not following me. The messages were offering information /service or promotions around subject matters that I had twittered about.
It was obvious to me that these people obviously had a Twitter alert of some form on specific key phrases and they were then sending these people messages and offers.
In the world of permission based marketing, I am not sure how I feel about this. The other week I tweeted about looking for a 1:1 yoga teacher in Leeds and some people that I don’t know sent me some great links. As I had asked for the information I was grateful for their recommendations.
One of these spam messages was around promoting their networking group. Personally I really do object to this. Just because I go to networking events and Twitter about where I am, does not mean that people who are not following me can promote their events to me.
How to use Twitter as part of a promotional strategy
Dell has been running an effective campaign to drive sales through Twitter. They have set up a Twitter account called http://twitter.com/DellOutlet and the followers receive messages when discounted products are available the company’s Home Outlet Store.
Using Twitter this way to allows the user to get permission based promotions, rather than getting spam messages promoting the offer / service.
To turn this around the companies should be using Twitter to drive traffic to the site, rather than using a Twitter alert service and sending direct messages to users. I can see that there will be a growth in Twitter spam, and it’s then about how you can manage this.
The question is – when it’s email you can get spam filters to block the junk email that you get – is there an application which will filter the junk Twitter messages.
More companies using twitter – but are they monitoring what’s said?
O2 have released the conclusions of a survey of 500 small businesses. 17% are using Twitter for a variety of reasons such as cost savings, recruitment and marketing
With over 1/4 using Twitter to stay in touch with other small businesses which helped boost their confidence.
But are companies monitoring what their employees are saying on Twitter?
I have seen some posts with people saying they have been to pitch to company X or working on a specific client – or even sending their email over Twitter!
Some information is sensitive and should not be shared in a public forum such as Twitter which is why I think companies should have a Twitter policy on what can and cannot be said on Twitter. that way it sets clear boundaries on what is acceptable and what behaviour is not.
I would envisage a company Twitter policy to contain information similar to email policy – but also including:
- Not sharing email addresses -as these can be picked up by spammers
- Not disclosing clients or information pertaining to projects
I am sure there are other things which should be added – anyone else got any good points?
Twitter – to be or not to be that is the question (surely?)
I was in a meeting the other week with a client. I was giving them an update on online marketing and I suggested that they should seriously start thinking about blogging and building their online brand awareness as a way of driving traffic to their websites.
The client asked ‘if something that’s written about your company that isn’t good – can you get it deleted off the forums or blog or similar’.
Once I had picked myself up and dusted myself down – I tried to explain that would be the worst thing that they could ever do. Why are companies are so frightened of only being custodians of the brand and opening the brand to their community?
If someone has a bad word to say about your company, this should be a prime opportunity to put right a wrong. It also gives you an opportunity to demonstrate to the online community that you are engaging with them and take their opinions seriously. Shunning them can only lead to a back lash.
I remember when I worked as ASDA on their graduate training and they introduced the ‘no quibble guarantee’ at customer service. The customer services team at the specific store were up in arms – worried that all the customers would scam them and ASDA would be out of pocket.
Strangely the reverse happened, for the odd customer that obviously was trying to scam ASDA, there were many more that were genuine customers with a problem or wanted to return a product, no quibble. What happened to the sales – from what I recall they increased, as people were more confident buying items if they new they could bring them back…
My parallel online is that if companies operated a feedback welcome policy online or got involved in twitter or forums, there would find that the feedback they got overall probably would be positive and could only boost the online traffic and brand awareness for the company….if only they would take that leap of faith.
Like it or not twitter had reached tipping point and it is here to stay. Remember the good ol’ days of beta or VHS videos…………companies that are early adopters of twitter will grow their business substantially online. Those who stick there head in the sand will be like the beta videos and will become extinct.
I came across an article on E-Consultancy about All atwit over nothing which states that
‘Right now, given that the loudest conversations on Twitter are still about Twitter, I don’t think most businesses have much to gain by investing lots of time on Twitter. Resources are better allocated elsewhere, be it PPC or SEO, affiliate marketing or offline advertising.’
Personally I don’t agree with the article. I have been in the online marketing industry for over 12 years now. Back at the start when Google was launched – search engine optimisation was prehistoric to where the technology and techniques are currently.
Likewise for twitter as new tools and techniques develop – this will open it up to the general public, not just the early adopters and will become a new form of online marketing. However, those companies that did realise the potential for search marketing, soon enjoyed a new source for generating more business……for those companies which ignore twitter and other social media sites….do so but at your own peril.
Yours, feeling better after a rant
Charlotte
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