Using Twitter For Marketing Part 1: Intro

Intermittently, over the period of a few posts, I'm going to address the potential of using Twitter for social media marketing. I intend to pick up and extend some of the existing ideas I've found around the blogosphere, as well as (hopefully) bringing a few new ideas to the twitter table. Needless to say, it's still very early days for this kind of social media marketing, so I'm sure ideas will emerge on twitter as I blog and twitter during the time.

As you can tell, I'm one of the people who find the Twitter phenomenon intriguing, and I do see a lot of potential and value in it (and other services like it). I do realise that there are many people who don't share my enthusiasm. I do encourage you to leave comments in either case.

A quick Twitter recap (but more than 140 characters):

It has been said that Twitter reached a tipping point at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas this year, and that "the buzz has now seeped from the blogosphere to more traditional print media". Newsweek has indeed reported on it, and more recently the The New Your Times has run a story. Incidently, The New York Times has also started to twitter.

Not surprisingly, Twitter currently has a big following among bloggers and people actively engaged in social media. This is no doubt due to the immediacy of live, group communication, and the opportunities it allows for directing people to other content. It's clear that Twitter is growing in popularity, but it remains to be seen whether it reaches a tipping point as far as mainstream popularity is concerned.

Twitter allows a great opportunity for groups of people to share experiences in real time. Tweets are also archived in individual profiles, and individual tweets can be found using Google. As I see it, these features offer quite a few opportunities for social media marketing...

Homer Simpson On Google Earth

Here's another item related to the Google privacy issue :)

Google Tracking Your Searches

I'm in two minds about new Google Web History which launched about a week ago. The new feature lets you store your entire Google web history online.

I have been using it, and I must say that it's a pretty useful service, in terms of being able to find something you've searched for and didn't bother to bookmark, only to discover you need it later.

In terms of the privacy issues involved, Google says they encrypt all the data and that you're the only one who can access it. You can also pause the service at any time and delete items. However, the obvious question is: do you trust Google enough to give it your complete personalised search activity? When combined with Google Bookmarks, Gmail and other services, this gives Google access to a great deal of your personal information and preferences.

The future advantages for advertising are clear. Apparently Google will eventually layer on a tagging capability to enable individuals to categorise and share searches (in a similar way to existing social bookmarking sites I imagine), and then it will be possible to begin Tagvertising.

People do tend to tell their search engines some things about themselves that they probably wouldn't tell anyone else, or at least they might tell their search engine first.

It could be argued that, unless you have something to hide, the new features are harmless, and you can always choose not to use Google (if it's possible to do that online these days) or any of its personalised services.

What do you think? Does it disturb you to see all your search activity stored and displayed by Google, and that Google knows so much about you? Do you trust Google to hold and use your information in a way that is only beneficial to you, or does it hand Google too much power? I'd love to know your thoughts.

Top 10 Reasons People Unsubscribe

According to a blog survey conducted by ProBlogger Darren Rowse, these are the top 10 reasons people unsubscribe from RSS Feeds:

1. Too many posts (the post levels are too overwhelming)
   
2. Infrequent Posting (or the blog is effectively dead)
   
3. Partial Excerpts Feeds
   
4. Blog Changes Focus (too much off topic posting)
   
5. Too many posts that I see elsewhere (Redundant, Repeated or Recycled News)
   
6. Uninteresting Content
   
7. Irrelevant Content
   
8. The Blogger’s Ego - Too much self promotion
   
9. Low Quality Content
   
10. Too many posts that are too long
    

Let's see, how am I doing so far? I don't usually post every day, but I do try to post regularly (time permitting). I try to keep posts relevant, but sometimes I do get sidetracked. Maybe I do tend to post too much from elsewhere, including this very post.

I hope my content is interesting to my intended audience. I do try not to have an ego or too much self-promotion (but please don't forget to check out my video blog, flickr photos, Twiiter moblog and LinkedIn profile). I think I'm doing a fantastic job really. Oops, I'd better stop now before this post becomes too long, like the last one.

How are you doing with your, or your clients' blogs?

More Twitter Speculation

There has been some recent speculation about the possibility of Twitter usernames being traded like domain names in the near future. I'm not aware of any that have been traded so far. Nic Cubrilovic raised the issue back at the end of March, and Steve Poland, author of Techquila Shots also picked up on it.

The issue has emerged because Twitter usernames are unique (what usernames aren't), so it could be argued that they could become quite valuable if the service is a runaway success. People may begin selling them to each other, especially some of the more desirable generic names.

Cubrilovic suggested that Twitter missed out on an opportunity by not reserving generic keywords ahead of time, to be auctioned as a way of providing a solid revenue model. He has suggested that it is now too late, as numerous services are being built and many speculative users have ’squatted’ (or is that squitted) on potentially valuable keywords.

It does seem to be the case that Twitter has the right to delete an account, or to take back generic keywords if it chooses to do so. No doubt this would be controversial, but still possible as usernames are not the same as domain names.

The question is, could keyword speculators go in and grab usernames in anticipation of the site becoming very popular, adding little value in the way of content and making the site less valuable that is otherwise would be? Clearly, many generic names have now been taken, with very little activity in most of the accounts.

However, other brand related usernames are already starting to be used. They don't have huge followings, but it's still early days:

twitter.com/bbcworldservice
twitter.com/cnnbrk
http://twitter.com/nytimes
http://twitter.com/technorati
http://twitter.com/CNETNews
http://twitter.com/woot

On a side note, some well known bloggers have developed substantial followings already:
http://twitter.com/Scobleizer
http://twitter.com/steverubel

It is interesting to note that YouTube and MySpace accounts have not (to my knowledge) been traded between users or sold by the companies, but here are just a few examples of YouTube profiles being used in a commercial manner. Although I'm comparing apples with pears, no doubt we will start to see similar things happening with Twitter in the future, if it stays around.

http://www.youtube.com/nbc
http://www.youtube.com/cbs
http://www.youtube.com/hammerandcoop
http://www.youtube.com/parishilton

What are your thoughts?