Twitter « VLG Dialog Marketing

Frosty’s Revenge

December 22 2010

Play Frosty’s Revenge. Follow Frosty on Twitter.

We know guerilla mail and microsites work. Would a traditional mail piece (with personalized URL) get enough traffic to a Facebook game to make it worth the effort (READ: investment)?

The jury is out.

After Jan. 1 we’ll give you quick stats on this new campaign approach. If our theory and research by other marketers holds, this is the start of VLG’s new product solution in 2011.

VLG mailer that is unique and thematically tied to a personalized microsite
Facebook game or page that is thematically tied to a mail piece and microsite
Facebook ads targets to a specific demographic driving traffic not to a game, but a microsite
A program-themed Twitter account used only for the duration of a campaign
Leads and measurable traffic that will reduce the cost-per lead and cost-per demo for our clients
YouTube video with same program tie-in to all creative elements above

Of course the same targeted solutions, with a long history of success will continue to create revenue opportunities for our clients, but it’s time for B2B marketers to embrace a social medium after a couple years of tap dancing around the role Twitter and Facebook play in lead generation activities.

Any suggestions?

November 19 2010

Do you use Twitter? Do you use the #ff hashtag effectively or at all?

Follow Friday (#ff) is a great way to thank your followers, promote those you follow and maybe earn a few karma points.

It’ll look something like… #ff @teresabay, @katiehaag, @GarinKilpatrick, @unmarketing, and @CaraFuggetta

Speaking of, anyone we should be following?

Where do the cool kids hang out?

November 11 2010

Social media is not far removed from the high school lunch room. You have the jocks sitting over there, the nerds there, the debate team, the tennis team, 4-H (we are in TX after all), and the loners. You get the point.

It stands to reason that those same self-selected groups would manifest themselves online. Set Facebook aside. It’s clear old high school and college chums congregate together. Where does that leave your business?

Are you one of the cool kids or are you a loner?

Chances are you are somewhere in between and in between is not always the best place to be. If you’re popular customers gravitate toward you, your products, your brand and more. If you’re a loner you know your place in the world and its not always a happy place.

What about everyone else in the middle?

You are overlooked.

Maybe it’s time to start thinking about how your company becomes the BMOC. Good products and services, a great story, and a great personality are the recipe for becoming the company others follow not a company that follows. Be bold! Go big or go home.

Hey, don’t be content with the middle or you’ll find yourself alone.

You, a friend of a friend, a friend of a friend, and someone that follows you

October 21 2010

Frigyes Karinthy discovered it. Kevin Bacon made it famous. LinkedIn turned it into a business and now Twitter is in on the act (sort of). At the end of the day we are all connected by six degrees of separation. On Twitter, however, it’s more like four.

According to Sysomos, if you scroll through a friends follows every fourth person will be one of your followers and vice versa. Trippy, huh. There are billions of people using Twitter, that’s billions with a “B”.

The key takeaway buried in this post is that small communities form Twitter’s core user base not unlike the real world. As you work toward building a social media network (um…community) expect to find yourself amongst friends.

Say, “Free!”

October 15 2010

It’s that time again. Free t-shirt Friday is back. Supplies are limited. Once they’re gone they’re gone, so getcha some knucks today. All we ask… just tell the masses VLG set you up with some new threads. (psst. click the shirt)

Search Made Simple

June 29 2010

There are so many search engines people use on an every day –- no, every hour –- basis and juggling all of them can take an excessive amount of time. Between Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, YouTube and the unlimited amount of other websites designed to search for products, images and other online — driven content, it can be quite grueling to manage all your search. One website comes to the rescue!

Favitt.com, an “all in one” search engine, enables single-keyword search across multiple websites at once. Favitt simplifies and personalizes the online searching process, making it the only search engine website totally customized to your needs. By creating your free account, you are allowed to add all the sites you frequent. It also allows you to customize the home page by uploading images onto the background.

Upload multiple images and Favitt will shuffle through them for a new background experience every time. This fun, effortless website is a one-stop tool for the inquisitive online junkie. It’s easy to say that Favitt is the multi-search engine made simple.

Technology’s Interference

June 2 2010

With all the technology and social media sites out there, it can be easy to overlook the personal relationships that are vital in growing your business. Between LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare (you get the point) there can be little time left over to create and maintain relationships with potential clients.

Earlier this month, The New York Times came out with an article that stated the number of text messages had increased by nearly 50 percent last year. A significant increase had also occurred with the use of e-mail, streaming video and music on cell phones last year, while the average length of time spent talking on the phone had decreased almost 30 seconds from the year 2008 to 2009. Society has become more reliant of technology to connect and interact with others, while the actual amount of time spent conversing over the phone is not as significant.

While the advantage of social media can be extremely significant, don’t just relate back to technology to work for you. We have become an impersonal society, even during our social “networking” era. Be above the norm and reach out on an individual level and actually interact with your clients or potential customers.

Stop. You’re killing me

March 5 2010

There are a few marketing buzz words that make you cringe when you hear them. Here we are in March of 2010 and my gag reflex kicks in when I hear:

Social media expert: These are usually self-anointed and woefully under qualified. In fact, I have a blog, a facebook account, a linkedIn account, and twitter accounts (yes, multiple). When you add up all VLG’s followers, group members, friends and fans and mine, well heck, we’re social media experts.

Viral marketing: Can you compare a waterskiing squirrel to the more recent Old Spice “I’m a man, man” campaign. Viral marketing might be the pinnacle of web impressions and tough to measure. Isn’t WOM so much better? That’s what we used to call it in the days before YouTube.

Twitter: Actually anything that starts with “Tw-” triggers tinnitus. I applaud Twitter apps that come up with original names like HootSuite, Su.pr and Birdhouse. Tweety Bird tweeting on Twitter would probably send me over the edge, but if I were Warner Bros. I’d be all over that.

I’m putting this post up on a Friday, because it’s a little risky and I need a slow news day to say things like “Tweety Bird tweeting” without wrecking my good name. Negativity is such a buzz kill. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

Twitter relevance

February 18 2010

For those of you struggling to find ways to extract value from Twitter consider these tools.

Twiangulate can be a useful networking tool for those of you whose actually “know” your follows or followers in real life. Use this to triangulate your follows with those of two close friends or colleagues. You’ll find out who you have in common, who they have in common and the app gives you a convenient way to follow others with one sure thing in common. Twiangulate calls them your tweeps, but don’t let the cheesy moniker get in the way of using this tool.

TweetStats gives you, well, stats based on your volume, keywords, and followers. TweetStats keywords are presented in a cloud so it’s easy to spot your most frequently used. It looks like I tweet about VLG, people, marketing and Texas. It also gives you your #hashtags in a cloud. #Marketing is a clear front runner. Twitter volume could help you adjust and schedule your tweets so you aren’t slamming your followers. If you want to stay top-of-mind throughout the day this will help you adjust accordingly. BTW- Su.pr is a handy tool for scheduling tweets and I’ve found more time and attention goes into what you tweet when you schedule for the future.

Give these a try and give us some feedback. Do you have a favorite Twitter app?

25 in 5 Challenge

February 9 2010

Inspired by Colin Alsheimer’s Social Media Challenge (follow @levelten_colin, #smschallenge) that encouraged all of us to stray from mainstream content and share a little more variety in our tweets, I have a somewhat related challenge to lay before you.

My wife uses Facebook and I’d guess spends at least and hour on the site spread throughout the course of a day. I don’t. Rarely do I use facebook to communicate with others. In fact I go days without even logging in. Despite having 302 Facebook friends, 261 LinkedIn connections and 177 followers on Twitter I probably communicate with no more than 10 people across all three media in a given week—so, not very social.

For the next five days I’ve decided to challenge myself and I encourage you to do the same. Whether you are a heavy user or passive participant in social media let’s put social media to the test.

The Challenge:

I challenge you to contact twenty-five people over the next five days that you’ve friended, connected or followed.

The Rules:

Only contact those you friended, connected or followed, but have not communicated with since that day.
Use only social media to make contact (e.g. post to a wall, send a LinkedIn message, direct message when you can).

Share:

We want feedback. Whether awkward or awesome please post comments here, on our Facebook page, or LinkedIn group. Tweet about it using #25in5 and suggest others you think we should follow. I’ll aggregate comments/thoughts on the blog next week and you can follow live action here:

http://twitter.com/mosimmons/twentyfiveinfive

If you’re a passive user of social media like me this will take you out of your social media comfort zone. Otherwise it’s just an excuse to check in with old friends, acquaintances or random people you friended on the Internet.

Ready, Go!

VLG Dialog Marketing

Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

Frosty’s Revenge

Any suggestions?

You, a friend of a friend, a friend of a friend, and someone that follows you

Say, “Free!”

Search Made Simple

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