The Think eBiz Blog

@BronxZoosCobra: A Great Example of Viral Twitter Marketing

Have you been living in a zoo cage? You do know about the Bronx Zoo's escaped Egyptian Cobra, right? However, were you aware that this cunning cobra has been tweeting about her escapade through NYC? Meet @BronxZoosCobra, a viral marketing genius.

"Checking Google maps. RT @sesamestreet The @bronxzooscobra is visiting places around NYC. Can anyone tell it how to get to Sesame Street?"

Within days, this sssssly snake gained over 200,000 followers and appeared on the Piers Morgan show with the founders of Twitter.

"Hey @piersmorgan, @jack and @biz, What does a snake have to do to get this account verified?"

Soon after, she was mentioned on CNN and Fox News and more. And her followers began to retweet and join in the fun at the hash tag #snakeonthetown.

"Enjoying a cupcake @magnoliabakery. This is going straight to my hips. Oh, wait. I don't have hips. Yesss! #snakeonthetown"

Magnolia Bakery along with Ellis Island, Guggenheim and many other NYC attractions received  great (and we presume free) viral publicity. Not to mention the publicity for the Bronx Zoo.

The BronxZoosCobra lives on after her recent capture...

"Just regurgitated my iPhone. Oh, it's ssso on now. You'll never guess what's coming. #freethebronxzooscobra"

What can business learn from the Celebrity Cobra's twitter campaign?

The Cobra struck fast; being the first to enter the Twitter jungle. Her tweets were topical, humorous and relevant - visiting interesting sites in New York City. A few copy cat snake Twitter accounts came online; and fell flat. There was room for only one small snake in this big city.

And most importantly, the ssssneaky snake did not try to monetize it's adventure; at least not right away. She established an interested base of followers building trust and credibility. Has she began to monetize her adventures?

"Even while incarcerated my reach extends beyond my 20 inches. I have hijacked Ryan Seacrest's Twitter. See for yourself @RyanSeacrest"

Twitter can be an incredibly powerful tool in your social media marketing campaign strategy. Even for a 20" escaped snake: BronxZoosCobra.

Potential #Twitter Advertising: SuperTweets

As reported by Robert Scoble in his blog, Scobleizer, the COO of Twitter Dick Costolo said that Twitter was "going to turn on an advertising model". The challenge of course; how will advertising be presented and accepted on this 140 character social platform? Twitter culturally, has been free of advertising - a change might not be well received.

Mr. Scoble suggested the "Super Tweet", which is contextual advertising that is linked to a "tweet", yet is viewable ONLY when the reader clicks or hovers over the content. We had two reactions - wow, great idea...  and yet be careful how this is executed and implemented. 

First, the idea would have advertising that relates to the tweet content. Scoble uses the example of a tweet telling us what is happening - "I am going to see the movie 2012". An advertisement or link could be presented to Fandango or Coca-Cola (ie giving a coupon for a soda at participating theaters). And the ad would NOT be viewed unless the reader clicks or hovers over the tweet. Otherwise, we assume that the tweet looks like it does today (and we mean no hypertext or coloration to change the look of the tweet).

Where we have concerns:  Tweet content is - we believe - owned by the author. Twitter owns the platform, but the writer owns the content - and represents what he/she writes. Therefore, does Twitter have the "right" to present an ad placed on "my" content. We don't think so - unless, by agreement, we share in the ad revenue. If we agree to accept revenue, then we are deferring our content rights to Twitter. That is not a bad idea - sharing revenue ala Google Adsense - if it is the authors choice.

Besides the revenue option, the Tweet owner should have a say in what ads are presented with their content. The rationale is easy - an ad that resides with "my" content could be construed to be an endorsement by me.  For instance, we don't drink soda, so why would we allow a Coca-Cola ad on our content? And what about political ads? Liquor ads? What if we are employed for Ford, and a Honda ad is presented on our tweet? 

Another idea is to present the author with the option of opting out of specific ad categories.

The SuperTweet would be primarily on the twitter.com web site (which is seeing a dramatic drop off of users - so other platforms would have to access the advertising API - and presumable also share in the revenue. Thus once again - the 3rd party Twitter product companies are further enriched at Twitter's expense.

Our conclusion: We believe the idea of SuperTweets could be very powerful and finally give a monetization model for Twitter - yet it would only gain acceptance with revenue sharing and/or opt-out options for the content owner.

Post Note: In an article that included an interview with the founder of Twitter, Biz Stone and Linkedin's Reid Hoffman, Biz dispells the notion of advertsing on Twitter. In this article, 3News "Twitter to Follow Google's lead", it was reported:

"But following a new round of funding, Stone seems in no rush to go down the advertising route which has been so successful for the search company Google."

So - is "Supertweet" or any other kind of advertising on Twitter really coming - or is there a major disconnect between Biz and his COO, Costolo?

#Twitter now asks "What's Happening?" (#w2e, #hashtag)

Are you sitting? Twitter made a change... in some ways a big change. No longer do you Tweet about "What are you doing?", now the question posed is : "What's Happening?".

Tweeters (those that Tweet on Twitter) have been bypassing the previous question, so it just makes sense to change the question to match how the massive number of users use this social media platform. The people have spoken- er tweeted. 

Does it really make a difference? In the old version (as of yesterday), you might Tweet (answer):

"I am enjoying a nice cup of coffee at Starbucks".

Yet now when asked, What's Happening? You might reply...

"I am enjoying a nice cup of coffee at Starbucks".

We might have suggested "Write what you want, but keep it brief please".

Ok, you may now resume your life and be sure to tell us all...  "What's happening?". If you want to know what is happening in my humble world, i am @sph001. I'll keep it brief.

#hashtags: Creating a Viral Buzz on Twitter (#w2e, #hashtag #viralmarketing)

One of the funniest keynotes at the NYC Web 2.0 conference was by Baratunde Thurston: "Everything I need to know about social marketing, I Learned From Being @the_swine_flu". Baratunde demonstrates the incredible power that could be leveraged on Twitter, all done 140 characters at a time. He is profane and perhaps politically incorrect, but look past this - and you will see a highly effective campaign.

View Baratunde's - being @the_swine_flue presentation at the Ignite NYC session. <For a longer version of Baratunde' Swine Flu Viral Marketing Experiment - he begins the hashtag talk at the 2:50 time mark>

More to the point, Baratunde's experiment prove that Twitter can be applied to business to create a viral marketing buzz - a digital word-of-mouth. Another Twitter'r brought to my attention that Kodak did just this in April, to name a new camera. Unfortunately I could not locate the actual tweets onTwitter: the hashtag was  #nameakodak (view one Twitter's entries). Another B2C viral #hashtag campaign was with Moon Fruit (#moonfruit). In both cases, the winner in these campaign's won a prize.

Viewing Baratunde's YouTube video will give you a sense of the depth of thinking that is required to make this campaign work. In the case of a B2B/B2C campaign - the rules that exist for bloggers and other social media programs must be kept in mind. Keep it real. Be honest and upfront and try to make it fun. Of course you are advertising your company's product, however make it engaging, and where possible, informative to the participate. A blatant Twitter viral "advertisement' will fail and may in fact be a detriment to your brand.

Think Ebiz will try to duplicate Baratunde' campaign and we will report the results. Please Tweet me or comment if you know of other Viral Twitter campaigns. I am @sph001.

SEO, Blogs and Social Media: Creating a killer online strategy

The potential audience reach online has expanded exponentially in the last five years, primarily due to  Web 2.0 and the social aspects of the web. By focusing primarily on an Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy to build your sites awareness and ROI, your online success is doomed to fail.

Search Engine Optimization, in its purest state of meta tags, site design and site-based content management is only a one dimension strategy; in a multi-dimensional world.

Blogs, as we know, are great for linking building for a web site, yet many people leave money on the table when it comes to their blog management. Blogs have the potential of very rapid top ranking, especially in lucrative long-tail keywords. We have seen articles ranked high within 15 minutes of release - yea really!  Think about your content and links when creating blog articles - especially in terms of your anchor tagging.

Social media completes the strategy by providing a wealth of link building and brand visibility potential. Twitter (Bing scans, Google will soon), Flickr, YouTube, Linkedin and much more should all be including in your overall plan. Be sure to review these and implement a strategy that makes sense for your site and business objectives.

To learn more about building an effecive multi-dimensional online strategy, please read Lee Odden's "Social Media and SEO: 5 Essential Steps to Success" article. 

 

Think through your optimization strategy

#Twitter: Is this social media star fading?

We aren't here to slay Twitter. In fact, we like twitter; we just wonder if this social media star is now on the decline, fading away like the CB Radio's of yesteryear. Twitter burst on to the scene and has been center stage for some of major international dramas (Iran Elections for instance). And we have met many influential people - even generated business leads from this platform. So why are we speaking of Twitter's demise?

Watching the tweets from the past month, we have seen a sharp increase in spam and self-promotion (in terms of obtaining more followers or quick-rich schemes). Just this week, we added a dozen new followers - all women with a single tweet; offering a peek at their... uhh selves. In other words, we believe the noise level and lower quality tweets will eventually drive people from this platform.

And this is not really a strong two way communications platform; just how many of your followers are actively in communications with you? Not many. In fact, I wonder how many of the 660 followers we have really see anything we write. There is so many tweets; without effective groupings and filters, much just simply goes by - replaced by so much other spam...

Are we wrong?

What do you think about the future of Twitter? And what is really next? Will Friendfeed's hook up with Facebook take away Twitter's thunder? And where does that leave Biz Stone in terms of monetizing Twitter? Will commercial accounts be a money maker (we don't think so). What do you think?

#twitter monetization: did Biz Stone miss the boat? (Updated 11/20/2009)

Twitter has become iconic in the social media space; mainstream with today's society.  The State Department even asked them to delay their scheduled maintenance due to the unrest in Iran.So the question is - with over 23 million users tweeting...  how does the founders of Twitter make money?

Recent suggestions are focused on extracting a fee from corporations to perform a validation process - to certify that the tweets are legit. Certainly this is viableyet it is also quite weak. Adding any kind of advertisements/messages to the 140 character tweets would become obnoxious and would lead to a quick fail. We think Twitter missed the boat big time; and yet there are milllions of dollars being made... by others!

Take for instance Eye Wonder; leveraging Twitter for one of their clients - the Fox TV Series Dollhouse. Eye Wonder utilized the "free" API's made available by Twitter - and are accruing value. None for Twitter.

The Economist presented an interesting article "Tweeting all the way to the bank" discussing Twitter and Social Media monetization.

We think that Twitter should have held their API's tighter - providing them to agencies and developers for a fee. And secondly, they should have come out with their own rich Tweetdeck version. Their home page is weak functionally - and yet a modified Tweetdeck could support paid advertising and other potential monetization vehicles. Tweetdeck did not miss the boat - they may be in fact one of the captains, leaving Twitter and it's founders Evan and Biz at the dock.

Update: A new article: "Data on Twitter Decline Stacks Up", an eMarketing article (Nov 20, 2009) suggests a decline in traffic on the twitter.com home site. The chart, (borrowed) from the eMarketing article shows a wide disparaity in tracking...  yet all shows a decline in this very popular social media platform. However, please keep in mind, this represents visits to the twitter.com page - not necessarily twitter usage. Big difference. And, this may further support our notion that others are making money - or are in a good position to do so - other than the founders themselves. We believe usage tracking will remain high, with traffic on 3rd party sites and mobile platforms.

Twitter: #Follower Influence Index

We have noticed that there are many different twitter personalities on this social medium. Nominally, your Tweet personality can be deduced from the number of followers, how many you follow and your updates. For instance, people with massive followings like celebrity Oprah Winfrey (1.6 Million) - yet she follows only 14 Tweeters - and has only made 51 updates. Not really a Twitter, as she does not provide content just attracts followers based on her celebrity status.  Others like Guy kawasaki have almost the same number of follows and follower (130K) - and over 25,000 updates. This is one generous Tweeter - both in who he selects to follow and his updates.  

And the scammers and spammers, who have massive followings and virtually no updates. You have to love seeing a Tweeter with thousands of followers and yet virtually no updates - and they are not a celebrity. These are the scammers of this online social world.

Most of us are in-between - a good balance of followers/following - with frequent enough updates.

Who are the most influential people on Twitter? Now there is an algorithmic means of calculating influence, thanks for the JCPR Twitter index.  Using indepth factors, such as freqency  of updates - the JCPR Index separates the popular from the truly influencial. Visit the technobabble site for details.

Methodology

JCPRTI	JCPR Twitter index	Rg	Range assigned to score
Fo	Number of followers	Fg	Number users following
Up	Number of updates	@U	Number of name pointing
Rt	Number of retweets	Ta	Twitalyzer score
TaN:S	Twitalyzer noise to signal ratio	Ti	Twinfluence score
Tg	Twittergrader score	Ii	Involvement index score
Vi	Velocity index score	w	Weight assigned to each attribute
Z	Standardised score	p	Popularity
e	Engagement	i	Influence

If anyone knows of a way to plug in their Twitter account and get a relevant score - this would be way cool

Twitter for eCommerce

We will admit it, we have become addicting to the micro-blog technology known as Twitter. And I am not alone, with over 7 million unique twitters last month. That begs the question - how do you leverage Twitter for your business?

Twitter, in our view, is not unlike blogging, so the rules may be the same. Rule number one - twitter should not be used for self-promotion and advertising. It should be used to enhance the conversation and expound on your thought leadership. Twitter, with its 140 character limitation - makes conversations challenging - but that is the point. Communicate your message succinctly and with impact.

We will explore this further - however we recommend for your business, begin to have conversations about your market specialty - using rich keywords within this brief content. Start talking about your subject area expertise - even citing white papers or new blog entries within the Twitter content... to lead interesting "followers" to visit your website.

Suggestion: create a special welcome page for twitter's who click over and include tracking code - so you can measure the results of your twitter campaign. More on this subject, stay tuned.

Monetizing Twitter - 9.3 Million Users in March

The internet has always amazed me. That a business model for an internet service could include no apparent monetization model. Twitter is a great example of a highly visible, well used service - and well funded  and yet no visible earnings strategy.

I can sign up for Twitter (no cost) and use Twitter (again no cost)...  and there are no advertisements. However, the potential exists - big time. When you have 9.3 million users on Twitter in March - per Comscore - you have huge potential. BUT how...    stay tune, I have some ideas.