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The last thing you want when you’re marketing your business on Twitter is someone poaching your company or brand name. It happens enough to where some users may not be sure if they are talking to the ‘real’ company / person or an impersonator. Of course, there are also some great stories of people who assume that there’s no way they are talking to the ‘real’ person only to find out that they are!
Fortunately, Twitter recently introduced a ‘Verified Account’ feature to help resolve the problem.
http://twitter.com/help/verified
It won’t completely solve the problem, but it’s a step in the right direction and demonstrates that Twitter recognizes the importance. If users can’t trust that they are talking to the genuine person or company based on the user name, they’ll find another way to connect.Verify yours! We’re heading there now…
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Like any curious or ambitious blogger, we like to see where we rank in the search engines. Since the content here is best categorized as Twitter marketing information, that’s what we usually check.
At first, everything seemed normal. Lot’s of articles on the topic as you’d expect. A guest post on Andy Beal’s (http://twitter.com/andybeal) Marketing Pilgrim titled “200+ Internet Marketing Gurus on Twitter” tops the list. ‘Marketing’ is in the domain, Twitter and marketing are in the title, it’s certainly on topic and has lot’s of links going to it. Wasn’t too surprised.
Then come some others that… hmm.. okay, I can see.
LameTwitterMarketing.com, Dosh Dosh’s article ‘Twitter Marketing: Why You Don’t Need to Mass Follow Twitter Users‘ (totally agree btw!) – these I can also understand.
Then there are some that really don’t belong, like a Craigslist post currently at #7.
Then it dawned on me. Where the heck is Twitter.com?! Search Google for ‘Google marketing’ and Google is #1. ‘Microsoft marketing’ #1 goes to a Microsoft.com page. Facebook gets #2. Yahoo #1.
So where is Twitter when you search for ‘Twitter marketing’? Would you believe #24?! That’s right, page 3. If you’re reading this, I’m sure that you’re familiar with the traffic that goes to the sites on page 3 versus page 1. Astounding.
How could Twitter let this happen?!
Here’s the kicker. That #24 result… goes to a Twitter user profile page that’s promoting a way to “Become a Marketing Expert with Twitter Traffic Machine”. Nothing to do with corporate, and even worse, it’s promoting something that could degrade the service.
Other sites on top of an actual page from Twitter include:
twitip.com
twitterholic.com
tweamr.com (woo hoo!)
And you’ve got to love this, an article on ezinearticles.com with the opening sentence…
If anyone should know about the power of Twitter marketing online and using social media sites for greater exposure, it should be chiropractors.
You can’t make that stuff up.
So where is Twitter’s corporate page ranked in Google? Not in the top 100, so it doesn’t really matter. The results on Yahoo! are a little different. A Twitter user comes in at a respectable #2, but the corporate site is still absent.
What I can’t figure out is that we know Twitter understands SEO. Search Google for your name. If you’re on Twitter, odds are your Twitter profile page will be right up there at the top along with LinkedIn.
Got a theory? I’d love to hear it. Is Google intimidated enough to pull some search magic when it comes to Twitter? Is Twitter intentionally holding off on any kind of marketing messaging until they have their business model fleshed out?
Whatever it is, I know one thing… I’m heading over to make sure I optimize the copy in my profile page!
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AdAge and others covered the story of how Land Rover is planning to use Twitter.
Two things make this one unique.
First, Land Rover is including #hashtags ( #LRNY ) in their online and offline twitter marketing promotions. I guess you could say that #skittles was first to really do this as a brand marketing effort, but it sounds like Land Rover will take it further in terms of promoting the tags. While Land Rover is ‘pushing’ users to their tag, Skittles ‘pulled’ users with their Twiter search results page for their tag. My guess is that the Skittles strategy will be more effective but their brand is also better suited for that approach.
The second unique aspect (for a major brand) of Land Rover’s marketing on Twitter is that they are using Twittad as part of the campaign. Twittad is putting a twist on things by ‘partnering’ with existing Twitter users to leverage their followers. It sounds like they take over the users’ Twitter profile pages for a period of time and may send tweets to their followers and then the users are paid. It’s not immediately clear how the users are selected – for example, based on relevance to the topic or to maximize reach / minimize duplication, etc.
Land Rover is not likely to remain the only national marketer doing this for long, said James Eliason, CEO of Twittad, the Des Moines-based “social-media affinity network” Wunderman tapped to boost Land Rover’s launch.
Twittad may sound good at first, but it’ll be interesting to see how users respond. The model will almost certainly need to evolve in order to provide true, quantifiable value to their clients. Just because it’s inexpensive doesn’t mean it’s a good deal.
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Kraft’s DiGiorno brand pizza has teamed up with PR firm Weber Shandwick to leverage Twitter to as part of its launch of a new pizza. The Twitter marketing plan is to identify influential Twitterers and deliver pizzas to their tweetups.
“We’ve always been out there with a lot of different media touch points, with a combination of online and offline,” Tom Moe, director-marketing for Kraft’s DiGiorno brand, told AdAge. “We’re always looking for the newest and most relevant places to be in both areas, and we thought this would be a great offer to combine with Twitter.”
Can’t knock them for trying, but we’ll definitely be watching this one carefully. There are way too many opportunities for it to go wrong. We can only hope that they’ve worked through a lot of potential scenarios – positive and negative.
We hope that the DiGiorno marketing folks are sincere. That they engage with the Twitter community. That they understand that they are making a commitment that shouldn’t be dropped after their initial launch. Last but not least, we sure hope that our they prove our first thought wrong – that this entire exercise was driven by the opportunity to generate some buzz by throwing ‘Twitter’ into the launch plan.
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If you haven’t heard about the race between Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) and CNN (@cnnbrk) to 1,000,000 followers on Twitter you must have been camping in the woods for the past week. Ashton was on Oprah (@oprah) and got her to send her first tweet – how can you ignore that?!
While millions of people still don’t get it, this is a BIG deal. This has nothing to do with Ashton himself. You don’t have to be a fan of his work. It’s about a major shift in control that’s taking place. Ashton definitely gets it as he explained in his live victory broadcast last night.
“The old guard has passed and the new guard is here.. We can and will create our media… We can and will broadcast our media. We can and will censor our own media ourselves. We are over a million.”
It was a defining moment for media and the buzz and retractions have already started.
Obviously, we’re huge fans of Twitter. Watching Ashton live last night was more exciting than watching the countdown to 2000. But, as my wife likes to point out, not everyone thinks it a big deal. That’s where Mr. Kutcher’s ingenious marketing head kicked in. He knew that there must be a way he could leverage the media attention that the race was getting. What originally started as a joke could end up saving millions of lives – seriously.
That little video spawned the David vs. Goliath challenge that had us on the edge of our seats. Ashton brilliantly leveraged the attention to support a cause that is obviously important to him – ending malaria. He committed to make a donation of 10,000 nets to protect people from the disease and that started the ball rolling. Already, many high-profile folks have matched or exceeded Ashton’s donation. Oprah committed 20,000, CNN matched with 10,000 and it’s only been a few hours.
It’s safe to say that the organization Ashton is supporting, malarianomore.org, is seeing more visitors and donations than ever. The charity acted quickly to capitalize on the attention. Realizing that most of their traffic would come as a result of the Twitter news, their site has prominent tie-ins to Ashton and Twitter, they make it easy to follow and donate and they even promote Twitter profile backgrounds to help spread their message.
As a marketer, you have to appreciate it at so many levels. Here at Tweamr, we talk a lot about ‘harnessing the power of Twitter.’ Could there be a better example? Congratulations Ashton on a job extremely well done.
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The blog, Online Marketing for Restaurants has started to build out a list of restaurants using Twitter. Some use it to promote deals. Others for customers service. Bottom line is that if you’re in the restaurant business you should be following each and every one of these guys. Doesn’t matter if you have your own small pizza joint and want to do some Twitter marketing or you manage marketing for a billion-dollar franchise, Twitter helps to even the playing field, gets you closer to your customers, helps you build relationships and can ultimately help drive business.
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Okay, nothing about marketing here, but this was too funny not to share. Enjoy!
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Press:Here, a weekly technology show airing on the Silicon Valley’s NBC affiliate, discussed the future of Twitter with their co-founder. Sarah Lacy, Jon Fortt. and Scott McGrew question Dorsey about the future of Twitter, what it will (and won’t do) to make money, and what makes Twitter unique.
Nothing specific to marketing, but Dorcey’s differentiation between ’search’ and ‘discovery’ is one of several points that marketers will find interesting in the interview. How can you take advantage of the real-time discovery capabilities of Twitter for your business? Market research? Customer support? Lead generation?
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Maybe he was writing it to intentionally get a rise out of people – to artificially inflate the comments or get the blogosphere and Twittersphere in an uproar. I sure hope so, because this article on Duct Tape Marketing couldn’t be more misleading.
The author does give in a little if you read into the article and his response to some of the comments. Sounds like he’s saying that Twitter can be a part of your marketing mix but that it shouldn’t be the first priority – especially for businesses that haven’t nailed down the basics of their positioning, messaging, etc.
Any legitimate business (and probably some illegal businesses – but we won’t go there) can benefit from Twitter. Unlike most demand generation activities, it doesn’t require any money only a little creativity and time.
While the odd restaurant or coffee shop may be grabbing some headlines because of their tweeting strategy, most small businesses have far greater pressing foundational needs when it comes to the limited time and resources they can allocate to marketing.
This is a dangerous statement. What follows is even worse. The author outlines a list of 8 items he claims you must have before you “bother with Twitter or Facebook”. While the list does cite some of the more popular tools to use, it’s far from comprehensive. The list could easily be 4-5 times as long. We’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to creative social media promotions.
No one should question that a solid marketing strategy is the appropriate starting point. However, businesses of any size that underestimate the potential short and long-term impact that Twitter will have in the marketing mix are shooting themselves in the foot, or maybe the leg.
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