online marketing

One of the key questions I get when discussing social media with businesses is: how can we see a result of a social media benefiting companies. Here's one of numerous examples of how public perception, real-time data and tools like Twitter shape the new future for marketers.

This is real life, real-time case that's happened to me over the past hour. I use Shaw as my ISP and about 30 mins ago, the thing stopped working. Tried rebooting the modem (often a solution suggested by ISPs). Didn't work. So, I wend to search.twitter.com on my Blackberry and typed "shaw internet". Got the following:

Twitter comments: Before Shaw solved the problem

* Please note that this is an image that was taken through a web browser on my machine once the problem was resolved. But I saw exactly the same when I browsed mobile.

This is real-time, real life example of social media shaping the future of digital marketing. Public has a say. If you screw up as a business, people will know. They will also spread the word by sharing or RT (re-tweeting) to help others form an opinion about the quality of your service. We share, we contribute, we, the public, form opinions of masses in real time, using real tools.

This snapshot was taken when the situation was resolved by Shaw. Although people are getting happier, there's still a bad aftertaste on Shaw's brand name showing between the lines.

Twitter comments: After Shaw solved the problem

Finished reading this book a couple of weeks ago. Very simple read. This book can help two types of people:

1. those who want to know more about Twitter and how it's affecting our daily conversations and lives.
2. those who are already in the social space. Shel presents a couple of chapters talking about processes, tips, and a bit on metrics.

I would subscribe to the second group and prefer a bit more specifics. However, I enjoyed reading the book for its stories and how well it's written.

As I've been using Twitter more often recently I realized that Twitter is posting ahead of my life. Here's what happens: I post on twitter, (because I created a twitter feed right into my blog), I see that the message I just posted on twitter is 7 hours old. I checked the time standard my twitter is on, I also checked the time on my WordPress install. Everything shows proper Mountain Standard time but my tweets are still happening ahead of time. If somebody had this problem I would greatly appreciate if you can share the solution you found. Feel free to use comments on my blog. On the other hand, it's pretty cool, the way things are, I'm living in the future. I would assume that I can change things before they happen :). This is crazy.

Gosh, wanted to post this video long ago but could not find the time. Kevin Spacey is explaining twitter in plain human language with humour! Hope you enjoy it!

I was talking to a friend of mine Ilya Sorokin just this past weekend about creating tools to analyze twitter feeds. Then, accidentally, came across an article presenting a list of tools that allow analysis to parse twitter for meaning. Here's the article, I hope you find this of value: Tweeting By Numbers: 7 Ways to Become a Twitter Analyst

With such popularity of twitter and immense information concentration in one online tool, it's hugely important for businesses to dig into the data to understand the brand conversations their potential customers are having. I personally want to know more about tools and analysis results, so please feel free to comment with your experiences analyzing twitter data.

Just reading an article at iMediaConnection about Twitter Experiments and how companies are using Twitter to get closer with their customers, create and enrich the conversations. I’m still one of those who has no solid idea on how to use Twitter productively for business purposes. Please let me know how your company benefited by twitter. In turn I’ll post my insights on the tool. Below is the snippet of the article with URL.

Article Highlights:

• H&R Block’s feed is 75 percent @replies
• Glam Media’s Tinker allows brands to sponsor filtered Twitter feeds about hot topics
• A mobile L.A. eatery uses Twitter to keep customers aware of its location
• Microsoft sponsors a collection of tweets from top executives

To read the article: 5 Twitter marketing experiments