twitter training for business

Posted by luke on Apr 2, 2009 in seminars | 0 comments

Want to know what this twitter thing is all about and how you can use it in your business?

Perhaps you’ve tried twitter but didn’t “get it”?

Spending too much time on twitter and not seeing any benefit?

Can’t see how to measure ROI for twitter, or to develop an effective business strategy?

You need our Twitter Training – the first of our Wednesday evening sessions.

A 2 hour hands on workshop for business (or brand) use of the micro-blogging service, twitter. Covering everything you need to know to create and manage a successful business twitter account.

More details on twitter training in Bournemouth

what if twitter

Posted by luke on Feb 26, 2009 in blog | 1 comment

started charging to sign up?

Part of the value in Twitter for a user is the ability to communicate with a wider circle of influence than you might otherwise of been able, as the masses join twitter the danger is that the noise to signal ratio increases making it less useful – but what if they’d started charging when they hit a certain number of users?

Would it start to make some real money that so far it has only hinted at being able to earn? Would people of left the service for another? Certainly charging existing users, would create a mass exodus… but some of the attraction for early adopters is the exclusive club feel – that would be, in some ways, amplified.

This is a very hypothetical post btw – it came from being asked why twitter was anything more than “the next big thing” – in their words, “it was all about friends reunited, then myspace, then facebook… now everyones joining twitter – its just another fad, I’m not signing up”.

That conversation led me to the thought above and also to wonder, what’s the next big thing?

What if twitter IS just a fad?

Some people lose a lot of money, the cool kids move on, the spammers and randomness takes over – this is based on what some people would perceive happened to myspace as a platform, although I would argue its reverted back to its “native” state of being a good place for bands/musicians/DJs/performers.

So what do you think?

Is it a fad?

If so, what’s next?

twitter favourites

Posted by luke on Feb 20, 2009 in tips | 0 comments

A great tip for sharing the wheat and not the chaff from your twitter feed is to make use of the favourites feed – anything of interest I see on twitter, I’ll click the star to add it to my favourites.
My favourites are then published as an RSS feed, which I’ve added to the side of my blog under my twitter updates – have a look, you’ll find some interesting stuff.

I’ll add to this post a diagram of how all my RSS/twitter stuff floats around the interwebs later

the speed of news

Posted by luke on Jan 20, 2009 in blog | 0 comments

This weekend, I heard the sad new of Tony Hart passing away via twitter first.

Image from B3ta

In the last few months news and eye witness accounts (and photos) of major events are often coming first from Twitter – the viral nature of the RT (retweet) phenomenon meaning that a story goes viral in seconds, after an initial tweet from an eye witness…

The BBC talks about the coming of age of twitter, through recent event in Mumbai and of course the incredibly skilful ditching of an aeroplane into the Hudson river…

Outside of news, how does this speed affect YOU as a business?

Anything can go viral very quickly, regardless of accuracy, are you prepared?

At talks I give, I often start with a quick survey…

1) How many of you use some form of the social web/networking personally? (Facebook, myspace, linkedin, bebo, twitter…)

2) How many of you have a strategy for the social web in your business?

At a recent talk of around 40 business leaders, about 35 raised their hand for question 1 and about 3 for question 2.

It always seems to work in waking people up to what I have to say about the power and opportunity of the network.

Being engaged with the changing way people use the internet, having channels open to spot threats and opportunities makes for a more agile and successful business.

comparing the meerkats

Posted by luke on Jan 12, 2009 in blog | 1 comment

Simply genius.

I was going to write a longer analysis of why i think this is a superb campaign, but most of it has been done very eloquently on the SEO Optimise blog.

Compare the meerkat works as a campaign for one key reason, it sets them apart from what has become a very competitive sector where the offering and price (ie free) is essentially the same for everyone.

How else would you compete in this market? Superior offering, better customer usability/feedback or huge market awareness?

A simple clever play on words, with a good social media marketing strategy (facebook fan page, twitter etc) and a simple mock website equals brand recognition though the roof.

The only thing I would of done differently would be to make it possible to link to specific meerkats on the site, if you find one that amuses you, all you can share with friends is the options that you chose to find that meerkat – people like to share the specifics too.