bwagy

There are some incredibly smart people which read the blog, here are a couple:

Robbie Mackay (@rjmackay): His blog posts, whilst short and sporadic deliver bursts of insight.

Andrew Weaver (@drewmaniac): Mixing it up, he shares great content, ideas and my favourite photo finish friday.

Louis Rosas-Guyon (@louisrosasguyon): Great ideas, from a technical focus, give it  a read.

Give them a read, follow them, send them a tweet.  At the least subscribe for a few weeks, get a taste of what they’re up to.

And I’ll be honest, I can only highlight and engage with those who I know are reading, if you have a blog send it my way… the worst that’ll happen is I place a comment or two.

Visit http://search.twitter.com

Enter some of your customers pains, see what kind of results you get, engage.

Simple.

Now download TweetDeck, load those searches as columns, check in once a day.

You’ve just opened yourself to a world of opportunities.

Running early for a client meeting a fortnight ago I pondered Twitter business models, so here are the results of that brain storm.

Models seen in action:

• Simple sales channel:  Push special twitter sales via twitter, coupons, don’t dilute keep them timely, relevant
• Customer Service:  Answer questions via twitter, talk to clients
• New Product Development:  Get ideas from your market, market research, watch the conversation.  Sure you can run focus groups but how relevant are they really, get unbiased reviews from real users of your product whilst they use it.  Fast & real time
• Networking & relationship building:  Using the networking model to meet people on a local or global scale, help draw people to your website, ensure that you can convert on your website.
• Building a niche audience:  To pour qualified prospects into your sales channel.

Potential Models I have yet to see utilised:

• Sell subscription to your network:  Have a free network of tweets, then charge for private access which includes coaching, marketing help, health etc.  (Used by the protect updates feature).
• Provide free data:  Users can take a new action to generate some dollars (ie free weather, txt for hourly forecast or traffic reports).
• Extra service layer:  Provide dm reminders of appointments, or account balances, notifications of specials.  Perfect for service based industries like mobile, banking, auction sites.
• Sponsorship:  Sponsor some twitterers to join in their conversation, or to mention your account, or to generate a conversation with them.  Like endorsement good to be seen with the right people.
• Gaming:  Provide a text like game, interacts with your brand, charge for upgrades.

The loose platform for conversations has huge huge potential, it is just narrowing down the kind of conversations you can build or extend a business off.

Twitter has in my mind reached a tipping point.

Reason being? at a family function last night someone asked me about twitter, something happened this week and suddenly everyone knows about it.

I will check in a few months and see if indeed this week has been it.  It definitely is in conversations it wasn’t last week.

Radio mentions, Skittles, Tv, all these things have combined.

People all over the world are asking the ‘internet guy’ in their frame of reference, what is this twitter?

If you are  a brand who has exposed yourself to this internet guy you are ahead.  For me I highlighted Twitter with Vodafone & Telecom, brands they know.  If you haven’t made the leap you are already behind.

Now twitter has reached this, what is the next step? Monetisation.

Tip of everyones tongues.

And from my readings, observations and looking forward several steps, contextual advertising is the way to go.

Twitter bridges the gap between, locality, motivation, mood that Google doesn’t.

Live, response driven ads, are going to not only help the twitter experience, they will drive a lot of value to users.

Imagine an event being cancelled, a competitor can immediately place an ad saying hey we are still on, for all those that search for the event.  This is timely, relevant and reaches a motivated audience.

That is just one application, same can be for brand monitoring ie search for coca cola, coca cola has a special deal or competition running.

I would certainly pay for an advertisement to pop up everytime someone searched bwagy or ben young.

That’s friday thoughts, have a think, how would you leverage advertising on real time search?

(Note: by definition Google is post-search, it searches events that have already happened, certainly within the frame of reference of someone who wants information from within 15 mins ago).

One of the number one questions I get is:

1) What do you do?

2) How do you earn money?

Since #1 almost requires an essay i’m going to answer #2.  

Actually no I’m not as that would require answering #1 which neither of us have time for (save that for another day).

The real question is how do you make a return off social media?

It is all about frame of reference.

Some Tv Ads are all framed around awareness, such that when you are making a purchasing decision you choose one brand over another.

Social Media works on a similar wavelength, that is by turning up and participating, you are putting yourself (and your products/services) in the frame of reference of those that also read / participate.  

Then once they in turn have a conversation or are making a purchasing decision their experience with you floats to the top of their minds.  

Why? Because they have had a real experience with you, whether it was some Marketing Advice or some chit chat about your favourite podcasts.  In such a fragmented world this is where the real value is derived.

Is this directly measureable? No but neither is word of mouth (unless you engage in just one tactic) but it is rewarding.

How about trends? Return is not straightforward, you need to look over the long term, over 6 months how are we trending.

So when you find yourself doubting social media, remember:

1) You are engaging with people.

2) They may not need you now but are likely to sometime in the future.

3) Once you have a relationship.  No one can compete.