Digital Marketing and Technological Insight

No one can deny that Twitter has become a game changer. Gone are the days where social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace ruled the online world - now, no matter where you turn someone is talking about Twitter. However, regardless of the amount of buzz, the ability for Twitter to actually monetize its popular service is the hot topic with everyone adding their own two-cents.

The good news for Twitter is that there is no shortage of  money making opportunities. One revenue channel Twitter seems to getting serious about revolves around Twitter  “business users”.  To prove their relevancy and win over companies hesitant to jump into the Social Media world, Twitter posted a “Twitter 101 for Business”.

Every day, millions of people use Twitter to create, discover and share ideas with others. Now, people are turning to Twitter as an effective way to reach out to businesses, too. From local stores to big brands, and from brick-and-mortar to internet-based or service sector, people are finding great value in the connections they make with businesses on Twitter.

Twitter 101 for Business offers:

• What is Twitter
• Getting started guide
• Learn the lingo
• Best practices
• Cast studies

Twitter’ guide does a good job of going over the basics and should be used by any company who has questions about how or why to use Twitter. However, the guide can only take a company so far - they need the internal resources and knowledge to put a solid Social Media / Twitter Marketing plan into action.

Visit the site for more information or download the slides here. Also, check out our own take on how companies can use Twitter and ideas on Twitter monetization.

Today I got an interesting email from a former co-worker with the subject line of  “The JAR Group wants you to create your own *damn* search marketing job!”. Since I have never heard of The JAR Group before I was a bit skeptical about what this really entailed. However, I was easily convinced that this was legit after checking them out and reading in more detail about their interesting hiring plan.

So what is The JAR Group really looking for? A Search Marketing thought  leader…but, in their words:

This position has no title. You can apply to us as a Director of Search Marketing, a Search Strategist, or even a Lion Tamer for all we care. We just want to find a good person who rocks hard on search marketing (air-guitaring while developing link bait… bonus points) and who fits in with the team like a well-placed puzzle piece. You know what you can do so we want you to create the role around our needs, and more importantly, around the needs of our clients.

To be considered, you need to do more then just send us a resume (resume email bombs go straight to our archives). Just tacking on a generic cover letter will also probably get you archived without any conversation. Email us, twitter us, blog about us, or hire a skywriter and let us know what you want to create. We have the team to make you great, so all we ask is that you make us great. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

Avoiding the traditional hiring process should yield some interesting (and colorful) results. However, will this get the person they are actually looking for? I am not so sure and will be interested to see how this plays out. Hopefully they will write a follow-up blog post after the hiring process is finished.

But beyond finding the Search Marketer of their dreams what else will this accomplish for The JAR Group? Quite a lot actually if you look how I interacted with them - not only did I read and then forward the email to various search marketing friends, I visited their site, read their blog, followed them on various Social Media platforms, tweeted about it and of course wrote this blog post. Not a bad way to get your name out there don’t you think?

With all of that being said…if you are interested in seeing what the The JAR Group has to offer head on over and let them know.

I randomly searched for the term “Search Engine” in Google this morning and was very surprised at the results. The three big search engines ( Google, Yahoo and Bing) all ranked below the top 3 prime spots -  Google was 4th, Bing was 5th and Yahoo was 7th.  However, I was more shocked to see  that search engine powerhouse AltaVista came up #1 and my favorite search engine from 1998, Dogpile, came up #2. Of course if Google was in the top spot people would cry fowl, but still…#4? Google you can do better than that. Yahoo on the other hand should just be happy they are on the first page.