Archive for the ‘Twitter’ Category

While Lady Gaga passed Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher to become the most followed Twitterer ever (like OMG) with  5.7 million followers this week, Roger Federer’s tennis trick viral for Gillette is the most shared video on Twitter (and on all social media), according to the Viral Video Chart. Nothing fake about his talent, though the staging may raise an eyebrow or two?

If you’re a brand about to launch a Twitter account, one of the first issues you face is what does it look like and who is going to run it? Do you go for the anonymous brand approach, which isn’t as good as having a real person, or appoint one of your employees to front it? If you choose the latter route, who do you appoint and what happens when they leave in 2 years time?

Well some brightspark at MTV has come up with the solution to all these conundrums, with a big wad of publicity attached too. They ran a nationwide campaign to find an MTV ‘Twitter Jockey’ – a representative of the station who will serve as their brand ambassador on Twitter for as long as the DJ style contract lasts.

The winner, trailing a load of publicity in her wake, is Gabi Gregg AKA @MTVTj. The 23 year old fought off other contestants in a apprentice style competition which included organising a ‘Tweet-Up’.

While not every brand will have the $100,000 prize budget to attract a ‘Twitter Jockey’ in such a high profile way – the principal could be applied across any organisation prepared to invest in the channel.

While only 14.6% of internet users are Twitter users, they are by far the most active content generators and primarily want product updates from the brands they follow, a new survey has found.

According to ExactTarget, daily Twitter users are about three times as likely as internet users on average to upload photos, four times as likely to blog, three times as likely to post ratings and reviews, and nearly six times as likely to upload articles.

“Consumers active on Twitter are clearly the most influential online,” explained ExactTarget’s Morgan Stewart “What happens on Twitter doesn’t stay on Twitter. While the number of active Twitter users is less than Facebook or email, the concentration of highly engaged and influential content creators is unrivaled—it’s become the gathering place for content creators whose influence spills over into every other corner of the internet.”

The study also established that brand information is top of Twitterer’s wish list, closely followed by discounts and sales. Read the rest of this entry »

Twitter introduced a feature this week that recommends three more people when you follow one, you may have seen it.

This raises the intriguing question  - who does Twitter think is your profile match?

If it’s true you can judge someone by the company they keep, the people Twitter are selecting to align with your profile will have a bearing on your online reputation.

Who does Twitter think are my peer group? Stephen Fry, Seth Godin? or is it wee Jock Poo-Pong McPlop, custodian of the Aberdeen public lavatories? – who I’ve just discovered has a LinkedIn profile!

To find out I conducted a simple experiment from another account and found my Twitter profile buddies to be  NMA’s, Andy Oakes, Amy Mae-Lee from Mashable and Local Social Summit AKA Dylan Fuller. Not bad associations for an agent of online pr. Read the rest of this entry »

Agency i360 has conducted research measuring the type of content brands are putting on Twitter, establishing this is 75% broadcast information and 16% conversation with consumers.

Consumers’ motivation for tweeting about brands is 43% to do with sharing news and information, 35% comment on using the brand and 21% opinion about the brand. Only 1% actually want to converse with the brand on Twitter.

Other useful findings include that 90% of tweets come from consumers rather than brands and 12% of consumers’ tweets mention a brand.

When a brand is mentioned it is likely to be a social network, an entertainment or technology brand.The top brands mentioned on Twitter are Twitter itself, Apple and Google.

i360 say that as brands talk mainly at consumers rather than engage in conversation, there is still a massive opportunity for marketers to become part of the conversation.

Their whitepaper can be downloaded here.

Following the viral success of their YouTube videos starring former Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Isiah Mustafa, retro aftershave brand Old Spice has taken their social media experiment a step further, inviting questions via Twitter that Mustafa then answers on YouTube. One answer to a question from eminent Hollywood blogger Perez Hilton has clocked up 169K views on its own. Inspired.

Shane Warne, an unlikely consumer hero has spoken out for the oppressed air traveller everywhere in eight vitriolic tweets sent from his first class British Airways seat on Friday night.

Flying to a poker tournament in Las Vegas from London, Warne blasted the seating plan, the broken air conditioning, the pilot’s constant interruptions, but had the greatest beef for BA’s cabin staff:

“Look I’m very lucky to travel first class, but the way British airways have spoken to the people and treated everyone, is a disgrace..”

“They spoke to this young family in front of me like they were criminals, they where traveling first class to, so rude and abnoxious”.

The influence of Warne’s comments is expanding exponentially, from his 116K followers on Twitter, to the electronic Telegraph’s 3m+ unique users and a similar number on Mashable’s worldwide readers. Pretty soon the incident will be famous and BA’s reputation will sport another sizeable dent. Read the rest of this entry »

Social media sites now account for nearly 15% of referral traffic to B2B websites that have a social media presence, according to the LeadForce1 analysis of 4.4 million leads analysed over a three-month period.

LinkedIn is the top referrer, accounting for 27.1% of traffic to B2B sites, followed by Wikipedia (16.8%).

Bookmarking site Reddit (18.4%) and developer site Dzone (13.0) also feature prominently, though this is probably due to the relatively high number of tech companies included in the study.

Meanwhile, Twitter accounts for just 9.5% of referred traffic to B2B sites and Facebook 6.9%.

Visitors referred to B2B websites from LinkedIn are more interested in finding out about the people within a company rather than what the company does: The most frequently visited Web pages are “management team” pages (13.76%) and “contact us” pages (13.49%). Read the rest of this entry »

According to the Hay Festival’s competition to find the most beautiful tweet ever tweeted, announced by Stephen Fry it is this, from a Canadian Marc MacKenzie:

“I believe we can build a better world! Of course, it’ll take a whole lot of rock, water & dirt. Also, not sure where to put it.”

Organisers of the festival that said the definition of the most beautiful tweet fell into a number of different categories, including the most eloquent, most evocative or the best pun.

Entrants were sent to Hay Festival’s Twitter account.

Tweets short-listed included SyfretJ’s “The blackbird’s tweet is fairer yet than all man can muster” and “Beauty is in the mind of the retweeter” by TheEponymousBob.

Source: BBC News

Global fast food giant McDonald’s has reportedly signed up to leverage Facebook’s imminent location-based status updates, which will allow brands to target consumers with geographically relevant marketing. The new location feature could launch as soon as this month in the US.

George Nimeh, Managing Director of agency Iris Digital told Brand Republic this week that the service was a natural fit for Facebook and a big draw for brands – as long as they keep the service fun as well as functional.

Karsten Weide, Research Vice President for digital media and entertainment at consultancy IDC agrees, adding: “Being associated with brands can be cool… Whether a lot of people think it is cool to be associated with McDonald’s is a different question.”

Whatever the result, the fast food’s giant foray into location-based advertising will make a great case study for our tolerance of this type of advertising. Read the rest of this entry »