From AdAge Digital: Twitter as a Marketing Tool -- Avertisers take heed

I just read an article about how Twitter is peaking -- meaning it's soon all downhill from here. And it's just started picking up in Manila. 

Philippine advertisers are still far from using Twitter as a marketing tool. So I don't know if it will ever effectively be used here for marketing. Maybe we'll catch on to the next new thing instead. Who knows?

But for marketers thinking of using Twitter now, take heed: AdAge Digital offers some advise on when NOT to use Twitter. Read on.

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Top 10 Reasons Your Company Probably Shouldn't Tweet

Everyone's Talking About It, but Should You Be Doing It?

Posted by B.L. Ochman on 04.07.09 @ 09:16 AM

B.L. Ochman

Mainstream media has gone ga ga about Twitter, which grew more than 1,200% in the past year, doubled its members in the past few months and attained 14 million members in March, according to Compete.

Everyone and his dog seems to be tweeting, from CEOs to celebrities to not-for-profits, venture capitalists, banks, business services, government and, well, dogs (and cats, and the random parakeet, too). Should your business be tweeting? Twitter is not for everyone. Here are the Top 10 Reasons Not to Tweet.

1. You think using Twitter is a social-media strategy. It's a tactic, a tool, not a strategy. It works if you already have an online following who'll view your Tweets as a way to interact with your company on a human level.
2. Every tweet has to be approved by legal. Twitter is a social network where conversation is fast and interconnected. If you have to wait a day, or even a few hours for your 140 character Tweet to gain legal approval, Twitter will be the wrong platform for you.
3. You plan to use Twitter for nothing but broadcasting headlines or deals. People follow people they find interesting. Followers are earned on Twitter. Be interesting, make only every 10th tweet about you, and you'll gain and keep a following. If all your tweets are a one-way street: Block!
4. You think a ghost tweeter for the president of your company is OK. Authentic and transparent are the keys. It's fine if someone besides the CEO tweets for your company, as long as they say that's what they're doing.
5. You are not going to respond when people direct tweets at you. Twitter is like the new water cooler. If you walked out to the water fountain and talked nonstop to people gathered there, they'd certainly be happy when you left. Ditto for Twitter.
6. You think Tweeting as XYZ Corp., using the company logo as your avatar, might be a good idea. Identify the person or people tweeting for your company or don't tweet. The days of hiding behind the faceless corporation are over.
7. You think all that matters on Twitter is getting a lot of people to follow you. Quality trumps quantity.
8. You want to protect your updates. If people have to ask permission to see what you're posting on Twitter, you're defeating the purpose, which is conversation.
9. You plan to track Twitter with Google Analytics. Google Analytics won't give you true tracking. You can track the URLs you post with a service like BudURL or bit.ly, but you'll need to use one or more social-media tracking tools to monitor your corporate reputation and influence on Twitter.
10. You think you can just jump in and start tweeting. Listen first. Monitor what's being said about your brand, your industry, your products. Then join the conversation and become part of the community. Then your occasional marketing messages will be accepted, or at least tolerated because you also add value to the community. 

From AdAge Digital: Twitter Twits as Google Ads?

Google AdSense mashup with Twitter -- ooh, interesting. Talk about taking contextual text ads to the next level.

Enjoy reading!

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Google Uses Twitter to Sell Ads

Intuit Is First Marketer to Have Its Tweets Streamed Across 

AdSense Network

by Abbey Klaassen 

Published: April 02, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Twitter may still be tweaking its own business model, but Google has found a way to use the popular microblogging service to sell ads.

When a user clicks on an ad from Google, it takes them to TurboTax's Twitter page.

The search giant has started offering marketers ad units that stream their five most recent "tweets" across the Google AdSense network. The first marketer to use the ad units is Intuit, whose TurboTax brand is trying to boost its Twitter followers. Intuit used several of the measures available for any AdSense campaign to target the ads, which are running on sites such as Bebo, Facebook, Hi5, MySpace and Alltop.

"It's syndicating whatever the team that works on the TurboTax Twitter account [@turbotax] posts," said Seth Greenberg, director of marketing at Intuit. When a user clicks on an ad it takes them not to TurboTax.com but to twitter.com/turbotax.

'Conversational vehicle'
The deal with Google also expands the audience for TurboTax's Twitter presence as the ads are syndicated it across the web. After all, while Twitter is growing and had about 7 million unique visitors in February, Nielsen NetView pegs the active digital media universe as 167 million people.

"We could have used this as an acquisition vehicle, but we're looking at it more like a conversational vehicle," Mr. Greenberg said. We're measuring this [in part by] how many followers can we get. Can we get to 100,000 by allowing people to know we're a resource? We're not going to hard sell you on the product, but we want people to know there are lots of people here who can help answer your questions."

The ability to put real-time feeds and data into ad units has existed for years, but one of the technological limitations of this particular execution was that users can't actually click on links that are included in the "tweets," or posts by users. Right now, the feed only pulls from TurboTax's Twitter account, rather than pulling a stream of tweets that mention the brand or tax-related issues. A Google spokesman said it is doing "limited" tests with a "small number of advertisers and publishers."

Not exactly a new concept
The concept of aggregating tweets and syndicating them on web pages isn't new, either, although it's more commonly seen on an individual's blog or other content-based websites than it is within paid-media placements. There are several widgets, blogging tools and independent third-party apps that can be placed on a website or blog to stream tweets organized by user, hashtag or keyword. Earlier this week, Glam Media launched an offering called Tinker.com, which lets advertisers buy ads around events or conversations. For examples, a retailer could buy all Twitter conversations around the Oscars, and those Twitter conversations -- along with the ad -- would show up on sites Glam Publisher Network.

The TurboTax ads are running during the last two weeks of tax season -- crunch time for tax-prep marketers. According to TNS Media Intelligence, Intuit's tax brand spends more than $100 million in 10 weeks. Intuit did not disclose how much it spent on this particular buy or whether the unit was sold at a premium ad rate.

TurboTax spokeswoman Colleen Gatlin mans the Twitter account, along with her public-relations team and Christine Morrison, social-marketing manager at the company. She considers them "enablers" -- they get people's questions to the folks who can provide answers. There are many reasons why the company is on Twitter, she said, but one big reason is that the microblogging site humanizes the brand.

Network effect
"We're raising awareness in the social community that we're here helping consumers," she said. "We make changes based on customer feedback, we're learning about the process."

Mr. Greenberg said he's still trying to work out exactly what a Twitter follower is worth from a marketing point of view, such as whether people have a greater propensity to become a customer when they're following a brand on Twitter or how valuable those customers are. But he's sure one of the advantages to the tool is its network effect.

"We're doing research about people who engage with us but also more interesting are their friends and followers," he said. "People can influence others in their own networks."

From AdAge Digital: The Reason why Facebook Changed Face

Since Facebook launched it's new interface, a lot of my friends (and apparently around the world) have been complaining about it. Somehow, being someone adventurous, I welcomed the change and embraced it. It was very different but eventually I liked it. 

Previously, I was getting the hang of regularly updating my Facebook status and did think it was a rising trend. With the new Facebook layout, you can go beyond just text updates -- you can post links, video, pics as part of that status. I abhor it when people resist change and expect new things to be flawless at the first try.

Since the change, I've seen Facebook's layout to be continuously improving with new features and minor tweaks. I know they're listening to comments but taking them with a grain of salt. No, they will not go back to the previous layout even if a million users threaten to leave Facebook if they don't. Going back to the old just because the new thing doesn't work well yet is stupid. 

Here's Why Facebook's All Aflutter Over Twitter

Seems That the Tweet Is Replacing the Status Update Among the Digerati

by Michael Learmonth 

Published: March 23, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Did Twitter just make Facebook blink? If not, why did Facebook suddenly get so much more Twitter-like?

Indeed, mighty Facebook, steaming toward 120 million worldwide users, pulling away from MySpace and even nudging Google on its axis, started emulating key functions of Twitter earlier in March after a redesign made status updates central and immediate.

Last week Facebook moved further into Twitter territory by allowing users to open their profiles -- and status updates -- to the public, letting users to speak to people who follow them but whom they don't necessarily know. In other words, like Twitter.

But why would Facebook, quickly becoming the web's 800-pound gorilla, try to stop everyone's favorite little microblogger?

Life-casting
Perhaps because with the blizzard of media coverage over the past six months, not to mention high-profile celebrity users, it appears that the tweet is replacing the Facebook status update as the main form of life-casting among some of the 6 million Twitter faithful. "I know a lot of people who only update their Facebook status through Twitter," said Steve Rubel, senior VP at Edelman Digital.

Or, more likely, it's because of Twitter's massive growth. The site had 7 million unique visits in February, up 1,382% from a year ago, according to Nielsen NetView. But even that statistic is an underestimation of Twitter, as many users update via mobile or third-party software such as TweetDeck. Forty-two percent of the service's audience is between 35 and 49 years old.

Facebook clearly saw value in what Twitter founders Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Ev Williams had built, and made a $500 million offer for the microblogging service last summer.

While the subset of Facebook users now lingering on Twitter instead of their Facebook profiles is tiny, traffic to Twitter has exploded in the past six months. "It's apparent to me they have Twitter envy; because they didn't get Twitter, they are becoming more like Twitter," said Colton Perry, senior VP-technology at NetPlus Marketing.

Indeed, in some ways, Facebook one-ups Twitter by allowing responses beneath an update, facilitating conversation threads that can be more difficult to follow on Twitter. "Conversations have gotten much more linear and in-depth on Facebook," said Geoff Livingston, CEO of Livingston Communications. "But the real issue is that Twitter has never had a real competitor and now it does."

Feeling threatened
As a media property supported by advertising, Facebook has quite a bit to lose if a start-up or intermediary like Twitter stands between it and any significant portion of its user base. In February, Facebook claimed 6% of time spent online in the U.S., more than any other property, according to Compete. Any alternative or intermediary -- Twitter can be used as either -- threatens that engagement.

On the contrary, Twitter has no display-ad business to speak of, though last week it did start showing the equivalent of a house ad on the right side of the page that explained "twitter search," "widget" and other Twitter-relevant terms.

But aside from that, Twitter's ad business is nonexistent. At present, it's a messaging platform, not a media property. But if Facebook caps Twitter's growth or slows it down, it will make it that much harder for Twitter to resist Google, Yahoo or Microsoft if and when they come knocking.

Last week Sanford Bernstein analysts cautioned that monetizing the service "would be difficult at best and likely unsuccessful," and argued that a Twitter deal could end up destroying value on the scale of AOL's $4.2 billion acquisition of Netscape, and eBay's $4.1 billion acquisition of Skype.

Yet plenty of observers think that, regardless of what Facebook does, the two can coexist. While Twitter appeals to a subset of Facebook's audience, they're used for different purposes. Facebook users tend to connect to all their friends and family, while on Twitter, they only "follow" the interesting or useful ones, and dump the rest.

Thoughtfulness
"I believe they are two different technologies," said Marita Scarfi, chief operating officer of Omnicom's Organic. "[Twitter] is about thoughtful pieces and opinions you want to put out, [Facebook] is about how or what you are doing today."

There's also a danger for Facebook in moving into Twitter territory. Facebook users consider their profiles private, and one of the bigger complaints about the new-look Facebook is that the pages deliver too much information.

"While there is a lot of overlap of audiences, they really are different groups," Mr. Rubel said. "A big reason for that is [Facebook] offers a level of privacy Twitter doesn't offer."

Just how many of Facebook's 100 million-odd users want their feeds hijacked by the Twitterati? "I would suggest some do and some don't," said Floyd Hayes, creative director of marketing firm Cunning.

As of last week, more than 800,000 Facebook users had weighed in on the new design, nearly all voting "thumbs down." A sample comment: "Frustrating to navigate. If I wanted Twitter I'd go there!"

An Evolution of Online Chat: Microchatting

Wikipedia defines chat as "any kind of communication over the Internet, but is primarily meant to refer to direct one-on-one chat or text-based group chat (formally also known as synchronous conferencing)." I still know of people who herald back to the days where IRC was very popular, long before social networking took off here in the Philippines. I wasn't a chatter during that time, and I never really got into IRC, not even after my young online friends from Davao tried to teach me how to work it.

My first foray into group chat was in "special interest" websites where netizens of a common interest, usually sexual in nature, all convene into chat rooms to talk to other people they normally wouldn't casually meet in the real world. Chatters liked the option for anonymity and the ability to maintain a totally separate online persona vs. their real selves in the real world. That's also where my online nick kuya_law was born. Some, me included, would choose to keep it real and bridge their online world with the real one thru eyeball (EB) meet-ups. Chat allowed me to expand my social circle way beyond what it was before. I have a number of good friends today that I initially met thru chat.

Then instant messengers came along -- Yahoo Messenger, the gold standard for Filipinos. But they were there for a different purpose: primarily private one-on-one chatting. It usually complements chatrooms when you want to take the conversation private. Another plus was permanence -- you can go back to talk to someone you've been chatting with before. And know if they were online or not.

Wikipedia clears, " It is important to understand that what separates chat and instant messaging from technologies such as e-mail is the perceived synchronicity of the communication by the user - Chat happens in real-time."

That's the thing about chat: because it's real time, you need to be online when others are. It starts becoming an effort having to spend a lot of time online trying to catch meaningful conversation (Meaningful as defined differently by different people). It can become an addiction. And it caters mostly to those who do have a lot of time to spend online. Not for your average netizen.

On the other side of the spectrum, you have blogs, social networks and forums where netizens post thoughts, opinions and sentiments that is less time-bound. You post whenever you can or want to, you read whenever you can or want to, and you react at your own pace. And there is a permanence to the exchange that extends the life of the conversation, but at the same time doesn't have the energy and "now-ness" of real-time exchange as chat.

Enter mobile integration and the concept of microblogging. 

Microblogging, as defined by Wikipedia is "a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates or micromedia such as photos or audio clips and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio or the web."

It wasn't Twitter that brought microblogging into the Philippines. It was Facebook that started it here, with its Status updates function. Before we all knew it, a lot of netizens developed this compulsion to update their status on Facebook more and more often. It also became a quick way to share content: pics, videos, music, links -- whatever netizens found online. And you didn't need to be verbose about it, unlike maintaining a real blog.

But the real charm of microblogging was that it encouraged what I call microchatting -- unexpected snippets of conversation that revolve around topics started by simple questions: "What are you doing right now?" or the new Facebook's "What's on your mind?" Suddenly public chat is initiated not by a chatroom or forum topic, but by anyone sharing anything that piques the interest of others. These threads can end after two entries, or it can continue to be 50-100 posts long.

In microchatting, the new currency is how interesting your status update is. Junk updates can get you unfollowed. Interesting updates can get you fans or followers. In Plurk, this is coined as karma. My friends who have started complaining about Facebook's new layout have not realized that Facebook has seen this trend and have responded to it. Your News Feed thread becomes hot real estate and friends who dump junk on it can be dropped. That's the point.

Now about Plurk:

Wikipedia writes: Plurk is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (otherwise known as plurks) through short messages or links, which can be up to 140 text characters in length. Plurk was developed by and envisioned as a communication medium meant to form a balance between blogs and social networks, and between e-mail messaging and instant messaging.

I never started on Twitter. Maybe it's like my aversion to Friendster. It became too popular and mainstream before I got into it. And I didnt understand the value of stalking people as was the selling point of Twitter back then. Then I read about Plurk and was curious enough to check it out. One week in and I think I'm a new Plurk addict. Now, when I go online, I have to keep open four browser tabs automatically: my Facebook, my Multiply, my Blogger, and now my Plurk.

Things I like about Plurk (without the benefit of being familiar with Twitter):

1. You can stumble upon total strangers who are interesting because of what they microblog about. (a benefit you used to get from online chat).

2. You have the onus to start interesting conversations by posting something revealing, interesting or controversial.

3. You can update your Facebook status automatically because of integration. (Multiply, Twitter, and other online spaces too if you want or need)

4. It goes beyond just status messages. You can Plurk photos, videos & links. (Similar to Facebook)

5. Karma rewards better microbloggers with more functionality and options. I think this is genius.

I'm still new in this microblogging thing. But I think it's here to stay. Time will tell.