Marketing Metrics, Messaging, and Madness

Using Twitter to Stay Ahead of the Competition

If there is one great thing about Twitter, it is the competitive analysis that can be accomplished by following your competitors and their distributors. By following competitor's Tweets I can find out instantly when a new sale has gone live, if they've released any new features, are working with a site I didn't know about, or even about trade shows that I may not have known about otherwise.

Out of the few people following each of these companies/distributors is the information they give up to us really outweighed by announcing a sale to 50-100 people?  

Another great way to follow the competition is to set up feeds for any mention of competitor names on Twitter. We've all done it for years on Google, but this is a must-not-miss opportunity to find out what others are saying about your competition (as well as you).

All You Need to Do is Mention 'Twitter' in a Press Release

To prove that the media will run any story that mentions Twitter, regardless of the value or information in the story:

I just ran across a story on Salon.com:

Study: CEOs Not Doing Enough On Social Networks

NEW YORK (AP) -- A new study says top CEOs should do a better job managing their presence online, on social sites like Twitter and Facebook and even Wikipedia.

Sharon Barclay, who runs executive PR firm Blue Trumpet Group and the blog UberCEO, took Fortune's 2009 list of the top 100 CEOs and found what she calls a "miserable level of engagement" when it comes to social networks.

Barclay only found two CEOs with Twitter accounts, and only 13 had profiles on LinkedIn, the social network for professionals.

Though Barclay did not poll the CEOs themselves, she says the results question whether these executives are managing their online reputation

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Personally I think I'd prefer my CEO manage his reputation by staying off Twitter to keep him from saying something that he shouldn't. But that is besides the point...she managed to get me to read a completely worthless release that basically just gets her company's name online. Personally, I wouldn't have done it until after I had a website for my company that people could visit after reading my release, but that's just me. 

MakerFaire 2009

Last weekend our company attended one of my favorite events - MakerFaire, the world's largest DIY festival. It is an amazing group of people that attend this show, and this is the show to go to see some of the most innovative inventions (and inventors) that are out there. We have several exhibitors at the show that already own lasers (many of which bring their machines to the show), and are developing more clients in the industry everyday.

This is a great example of a marketing vehicle that might not be within our typical demographic, but by sponsoring a great event of which people are huge advocates we have been able to create an incredible marketplace that we didn't necessarily see developing a couple of years ago. By developing a place for ourselves in a niche (but influential) market, we've been able to place ourselves ahead of the curve for the consumer side of marketing our product.  

Keep an eye open for shows like this that bring in the media and the very best of bloggers and even as a marketer of a small- to medium-sized business you can be a hit among some of the big players.  We saw signs with our logo next to (and often above) Yahoo, Google, HP and Radio Shack. That is a very exciting thing for a marketer to see when much of your advertising is done through trade publications.

Twitter and Facebook are Not Necessary For Every Marketing Initiative

"What does it mean that none of Apple’s demos today involved Twitter or Facebook, the hottest two sites on the Internet? It means Apple hasn’t internalized the social networks craze...Instead, Apple’s onstage ignorance of social networking shows how slow-moving and out of touch the company can be. It’s easy to find Microsoft shortcomings to mock. It’s harder to recognize your own." This was written by Paul Boutin at VentureBeat in his article 'The Three Things Apple Didn't Say'.

Thank goodness. A company that doesn't find it necessary to Twitter in their demonstration. Maybe they see the future of companies trying to find a way to use Twitter and know that the future is bleak. I've tried following several companies that are noted for their "compelling" Twitter posts, but let's face it...they just aren't that compelling. None of the ongoing content is keeping me involved. I'm a Mileage Plus whore, so I read the posts from United, and aside from the Twitter Fares (twares? ugh.) I scan the posts but don't read anything of interest. Would I be willing to fill up Twitter by following five companies? six? More likely one or two. You'd better be giving me something of interest to stay in the top two.

I understand Boutin's point that a Twitter demonstration would have been a good fit with the iPhone's ability to post video and photos easily on these sites, but I don't know of an iPhone/Twitter user that doesn't get that fact without having to be hit over the head with the fact. 

I guess what brings this post up is that right now, I feel hit over the head by Twitter. I attended a search engine summit last week and heard over and over how you aren't creating a full marketing campaign without working Twitter into the mix.  While I see a definite place for incorporating Twitter or Facebook into a marketing campaign when it is a fit - especially when trying to reach your advocates - it is not a necessity for every campaign.  I didn't hear anything about the fit of the audience to the sites, just repeated jokes about "finding your voice" on Twitter. 

My company has a Facebook Fan site where we enjoy posting engaging content, but it is to build the loyalty of the advocates, not to try to be cool. Not to try to prove that we "get" social media. And not to (blatantly) sell products. It's to have a truly useful site for our customers. It's not there yet, but hopefully we're getting there.

Thank you, Apple, for not being as obvious as to include Twitter in your presentation. This is one of your advocates that appreciates it.

Filter Columns in New AdWords Interface

I was annoyed with the new AdWords interface because I couldn't see all of my columns on the screen without scrolling horizontally.  I finally found out the very easy fix - check out the Filter and Views button at the top right side of the screen. Choose the second option, "Customize Columns" and choose which columns to hide.

Unfortunately it won't let me hide the two columns I use the least often: the enabled column and the status column, but it makes the interface much more user friendly.