The other day I was sitting on a patio at a local coffee joint and watching people walk by (in a totally non-creepy way!). It was the first day of spring in Toronto, love seemed to be in the air (this won’t get any cheesier I promise) and I couldn’t help but wonder what made relationships tick. At that very instant, I was struck by a profile on tribe.net. This was the profile of “Love is Everything“. 
I was amazed at how many friends Frank (the dude behind the profile) had – over 14,000! As I spent some time going through his page on Tribe I realized some critical things -
a. Frank figured out what his brand stands for, but he didn’t stop at that. Most importantly, he found a way to translate his brand promise into a cause worth pursuing.
b. Frank is truly authentic! He solely focuses on advancing his message through posts that add value to the community. He does this by giving his community content that furthers the cause.
c. Frank isn’t obsessed with himself. In fact, he hardly talks about himself on his profile.
In today’s digital economy, companies absolutely need to engage and involve their custo
mer communities if they want to regain their business. Unfortunately, just having a great brand and brand promise is not sufficient.
A few days ago, John Bell blogged on the “Utility Brief”. I’d like to leave you with a quote from his article. Hopefully you’ll ponder over this post and share your thoughts.
“Today, consumers want their brands to deliver more value through utility, entertainment or information (the latter two are really just forms of utility). They want high quality products and services but expect brands to go beyond that to keep them as customers or to at least earn their advocacy.”
Marketing Commentary by .
I saw a tweet this morning from April Dunford (A product marketing consultant from the tech industry…who I obviously follow) and it prompted me to write this blog post.
Lets face it, the #ad model’s not going to work on Twitter. Why? Well, it’s simple. If your ads on twitter have to be effective, you need to have followers who could possibly consume your advertising. Unfortunately, just like April, there will be many others who will stop following you the moment you start advertising (explicitly…we all currently advertise, but in more subtle ways) using your Twitter account. This will basically undermine your credibility and reduce the effectiveness and reach of your ads.
Net result: An unsustainable process/model. Sorry…!
Marketing Commentary by .
I did my first ever twitter interview with Adam (@adam_giambrone) last week. He was really accessible and I would like to thank him for taking the time to reply to my messages. Adam is exactly the kind of person we need to chair the TTC. From a cultural perspective, through efforts such as these, the TTC will be better able relate to audiences such as yourself and hope to establish a loyal following.
I would also like to thank @Barisak (representing @SQSolutions) for his contribution to the interview questions on twitter.
Here’s the transcript…enjoy!
You can follow me on twitter @interpretivist. I wasn’t the perfect interviewer on twitter for this round and I learned a lot. I plan to do a quick post later this week sharing some learnings…and hopefully that might help you better your twitterview skills.
Marketing Commentary by .
I bumped into Adam Giambrone (TTC Chair/City Councillor) at an event last night. During our conversation, I asked him if he’d like to do a twitter-based-interview with me for this blog and he agreed. So, I’m excited…its scheduled for Monday. Now, I’m looking for some good questions to ask him. If you have any ideas, send them across to me either through twitter, or just as a comment on this blog. Remember it has to be less than 140 words! I’m looking forward to this experience. Watch out for more!
Marketing Commentary by .
Ever since I started using Twitter, this question has been bothering me – how social is social media today? Where is this platform going to go over the next couple years? After hearing Mitch Joel talk about this issue in his podcast last week, I decided to blog about it.
I did a little experiment a few weeks ago – I asked a question on my facebook as well as Twitter feeds. I got over a dozen replies on facebook (with about 300 friends as far as I can remember) and 2 replies on Twitter (with over 1,800 followers). This experiment really sums up “the game” for me today – platforms like twitter are really encouraging mass broadcasting/publishing. Its really not encouraging social interaction. Having said that, many blogs still do and I hope mine will as well. I therefore strongly urge you (as a reader, consumer, blogger, twitterer etc) to look at creating communities within each of these platforms. Sharing through broadcasting is okay, but its sharing through personal interaction that really helps me sleep at night.
Marketing Commentary by .
Apr 10
18
Why smart marketers won’t use Twitter’s ad platform
Market conversations are where the action is. As marketers, we’re always trying to listen to these conversations and trying to find ways to participate in them. Twitter allows marketers and brands to become a part of these market conversations. The reason why Twitter succeeds in doing so is that it forces brands to participate in these conversations like everyone else and empowers consumers and prospects. There is a certain purity to these conversations.
(Video Source: All Things Digital)With twitter’s new ad platform, advertisers can actually purchase popular tweets with the idea being that sponsored tweets would continue showing as long it retains its resonance. The problem with this is that it significantly reduces the purity of a brand’s participation in market conversations and dilutes the referral effect that the original tweet might have had. The power of Twitter communities is in user referrals as its empowering to consumers. The moment you allow a brand to take that referral over, you dilute its effect.
Another problem with sponsored tweets is that gradually, consumers will get used to seeing such tweets either in their search results or in their time-lines (coming in the future) and will learn to ignore them.
It’s important that marketers maintain the purity of market conversations on Twitter. Investing in ads will definitely damage that purity and dilute the positive effects of community development activities that you’ve spent marketing dollars on.
Posted in Marketing Commentary by Ujwal Arkalgud. 1 Comment