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.

The monetization of any “Web 2.0″ website is a hot topic, regardless of how much traffic and/or buzz they have. At some point you have to make money, not just spend it. Digg, the leader in social bookmarking, announced yesterday their plans to further monetize their traffic by incorporating ads into the main Digg “river” that users can either Digg or Bury. How users react to the advertisement will determine how much the advertiser will end up paying.

Today, we’re announcing our plans to roll out a new advertising platform — Digg Ads. Digg Ads will give you more control over which advertisements are displayed on Digg. The more an ad is Dugg, the less the advertiser will have to pay. Conversely the more an ad is buried, the more the advertiser is charged, pricing it out of the system.

You can see what Digg Ads might look like here.

From a users perspective I like the concept of Digg Ads, of course having no ads would be ideal but Digg has a right to make money. However, having the ability to control what I want and don’t want to see makes the idea of integrated ads somewhat bearable. From an advertisers perspective I absolutely hate Digg Ads. First I cant imagine many ads will actually get Dugg very often, the majority of people will choose to bury ads - especially in the beginning. On top of that, not having a clear understanding of end cost isn’t appealing at all.

The concept of Digg Ads will surely  interest some advertisers enough to run a few tests. But, since there is no shortage of  high-traffic sites that target the same demographic , don’t expect Digg Ads to stay up for very long if it doesn’t catch on.

There are two main questions I hear over and over again when it comes to Twitter…both of which revolve around the same theme of how do “I or we” use it? From a individual  perspective the question becomes more about what the person is looking to gain. From a business perspective things get a bit more complicated but the objective becomes clearer.

I have heard plenty of positive stories and have had my own success using Twitter from a business perspective. Whether for pure traffic generation, customer service, revenue or just general communication - it is clear Twitter is a powerful took every company should be taking advantage of.

Below is a quick list I put together of  ways companies can utilize Twitter (in no particular order).

• Coupon Promotion. Have a coupon or discount code? Why not put it on Twitter and let your fans become your marketers by retweeting and posting. An even better idea is to generate a Twitter exclusive coupon.
• Promote limited time offers. “Only 3 hours left to save an extra 25% off our top products!”
• Online Reputation Management. By using Twitter Search you can monitor mentions of your brand and address any potential issues.
• Customer feedback / reviews.
• Out of stock alerts. Have a hot product that is selling well? Let your followers know there is only a limited quantity left.
• Job recruiting.
• New product alerts
• Shopping advice. Who doesn’t love a good “Here some of our favorite  summer shoes” type links?
• Be the expert. Proactively engage the Twitter audience through Twitter Search. If you are a sock company and someone is asking about socks - answer their question! Not only will you gain a follower you might gain a customer as  well.
• General company news and announcements
• Message testing. Before launching an advertising campaign why not get instant feedback / reaction from your followers first?
• Company fun / random facts.
• Tips and advice related to your companies business.
• Links to new content / blog posts.
• Question & Answer sessions.
• Company stock quotes.
• Market research
• Customer Service
• Promote email
• Promote profiles on other social media services.
• Direct communication from company executives.
• Interesting news and articles not from your company but related to your business.

Should a company take on everything listed above? Of Course not. But, every company who has a Twitter presence should at least be doing a few.

What are some of the other ways companies can use Twitter?

I have been talking about Twitter and other micro-blogging services for a couple years now - the discussion of Twitter monetization has gone for almost as long.  The buzz  Twitter gets is always at a fevered pitch but recently it has been even higher with the “talks” of a Google acquisition. With all the hype and hoopla going around a few interesting discussions have been taking place about what a Twitter brought to you by Google would look like. Outside of integrating GMail, Google Docs, Picasa and other Google services the real interesting potential would be adding AdWords Contextual targeting.

Personally I would hope that either Twitter itself or whomever bought it would not ruin the user-experience by placing ads on either the profile pages or tweet streams. However, what about Twitter search? Think about it for a second - advertisers could target real-time conversations through the existing AdWords (or similar) platform. Check out my mock-up below: people are tweeting about SXSW in Texas…ads for Texas travel deals show up on the side. Sounds like a home run to me…plus Twitter doesn’t need to be bought by Google to do this - a nice rev-share agreement would do just fine.