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.

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.

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.

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.

Is your Realtor using Twitter to promote your house? This seller took matters into his own hands, but isn’t ‘find a buyer’ the main reason to hire a real estate agent? Agents, you’re forgiven if you don’t offer Twitter promotion as a standard part of your offering today, but that probably won’t be the case for long.

Once you better understand Twitter and its potential applications, you’ll find that it’s not only promote your listings but also a great way to attract new clients – buyers and sellers. We’re developing a report specifically for Realtors. In the meantime, be sure to download our “12 Essential Marketing Rules for Twitter” (available at the top right of this page).

This pizzeria has more than 1,000 followers on Twitter and sends them instant messages about different meal deals and other incentives to come in.

Anyone that doesn’t at least understand that Twitter has become a disruptive marketing tool should immediately stop reading this, start with some earlier posts and the articles they recommend.

Disruptive technologies, by definition, change the way people do things. In most cases, our the way we use these technologies evolves as we learn more about them and what we want to get out of them.

When we got our first Tivo, at first we only recorded a few shows. We’d watch them and delete them then wait for something else to be recorded. Then we realized that it would be great if there was always something to watch so we added more shows to record and let Tivo record its own ‘suggestions’. At first, we were overwhelmed. We were so used to watching and deleting shows that we felt like we couldn’t keep up anymore. It took a little while before we were ‘okay’ with not watching EVERYTHING that was on Tivo. Now, 8 years later, it’s totally natural.

The pattern evolves over time and varies depending on the individual and the benefit that they are hoping to get out of the technology.

So what does this have to do with Twitter? We’re only starting to see what’s possible. Even the early adopters are still evolving their usage of Twitter. The big question that came up recently in this New York Times article is whether or not it’s acceptable to use a ghostwriter for celebrity or corporate tweets.

Keeping a constant stream of tweets flowing to the followers of a brand (whether you’re a celebrity or a corporation) is crucial. Go dark for too long and you’ll never realize the full potential of Twitter. If you can’t do it yourself, a ghostwriter is definitely better than sporadic tweets. However, you’ve got two choices – either you have to be up-front and fess-up that the tweets are coming from multiple writers, or, you have to be darn sure that the ghostwriter is accurately representing your brand. Maybe you can’t write every tweet, but you or someone on your marketing or PR team should review them before they go out.

Keeping a constant flow of tweets is key and requires a separate post. We’ll get that up asap. Enjoy the Times article.

The WSJ posted an article about Guy Kawasaki’s keynote presentation at Search Engine Strategies in NY. During his presentation, he called Twitter “the most powerful marketing tool that I’ve seen since probably television.” He also talks about the value of retweets and using Retweetist to monitor them (claims that he uses it as his ‘scorecard’ and checks 5-10 times a day).

This article on MediaPost written by Mark Ghuneim of Wiredset talks about the new ‘Suggested Users’, ‘Trends’ and ‘Search Now’ options and the potential impact on branding.

Zappos, Mashable (@Mashable), and Jet Blue (@JetBlue), among others, have proven that users and brands can pick up 200,000 followers, solely by being designated a “Featured User.” These brands and users are then involved in a live conversation and engagement around their brand. This demonstrates Twitter’s ability to be a driver and conduit to the consumer. It is even more impressive when you consider how far off the main page these opt-ins live.

This article from InternetNews.com perked up a lot of ears. “Dell sold $1M worth of product using Twitter?” While many people still question the business model for Twitter, mainstream companies are signing up right and left. Now that Twitter’s funding situation is pretty solid, it seems that there is confidence that Twitter is here to stay.

Twitter is becoming indispensable not just for navel gazers but for companies looking to sell a product and keep in touch with customers.

As reported by InformationWeek, last month, Dell is continuing to leverage Twitter by offering about 12,000 @DellOutlet followers a 30% discount on an XPS M1210 laptop. There was an exclusive link that took people to coupon code to use when ordering online.