Posts tagged: twitter

Waste Less Time on Social Media With the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine

December 31, 2009, by 2 comments

Social media’s the hot marketing topic right now (and this despite the reality that search and email remain the ROI leaders, and by a sizable margin).

Still, there’s no underestimating the amount of time most slackers freelancers waste on Facebook and Twitter, so if your New Years resolutions include “I will focus on my business and waste less time on Facebook and Twitter,” then we’ve got just the site for you:

Web 2.0 suicide machine

It’s the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine – a brilliant site which will wipe out your Web 2.0 existence while you wait.

Twitter, Facebook, MySpace… all gone in minutes. Then you can join the ranks of luddite curmudgeons worldwide. Frankly, we don’t see a downside.

(Still, if the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine truly is anti-Web 2.0, why aren’t they bucking the “everything is free” trend and charging for it?)

Once again, the Underground scours the Internet for the kind of productivity-enhancing tips you simply won’t find anywhere else.

Keep writing (and not on Facebook), Tom Chandler.

TV Show Leverages Twitter With One-Two Mystery Pitch

January 8, 2009, by 9 comments

Marketers are always on the lookout for new ways to leverage new media, and brand new platforms like Twitter offer fertile ground for creativity.

Two days ago, I was informed that “PattyHewes” was following me on Twitter. I took a quick look, but didn’t recognize the photo of Glen Close.

I did, however, notice the hardass tweets, which included:

@gjkooijman That’s what Tom Shayes discovered. He thought he was ready to run the show after years of being in my shadow. How wrong he was.

Everyone thinks they want to be at the top. But most are just fooling themselves. Few have the stomach for it. Or the balls.

OK, that’s not someone I need to follow.

I forgot about it until the next day, when I was followed by another character who tweeted “If @PattyHewes is following you, you *should* be scared. You should be terrified.”

glenclose

That got my attention.

A quick visit, then I put the pieces together – both were characters in a TV series called “Damages” and I’d been Twitterbaited (I thought I’d made that up myself until I googled it).

It’s a creative tactic, though a little unsettling to see TV characters crossing the digital divide into the “real” world (the “reality” of Twitter could probably be debated).

The characters are adding new tweets (about one per day), and the list of followed and followers continues to grow.

Will some consider this the Twitter equivalent of spam; a breach of etiquette that will outweigh the advertising aspect?

Keep writing, Tom Chandler

Twitter Used by Mad Men to Engage Audience

August 22, 2008, by 4 comments

UPDATE: I recently saw a post suggesting that all the Mad Men characters on Twitter aren’t part of the show – they’re simply fans. If it’s true, then the producers should probably kick themselves. If it’s not, the kudos for firing up more interest…

Hit TV show Mad Men is apparently using Twitter to communicate with its audience – in the voices of its leading characters.

You can read the whole story at American Copywriter, but here’s a tease:

For instance, last Sunday morning, well before the episode aired, @don_draper tweeted: “Wishing I didn’t have to spend most of my Sunday at the office.” It was later revealed in the show, of course, that Draper had to head into the city to work on the American Airlines pitch. Nice.

It’s a pretty example of engagement marketing via social network tools. Engaging with an audience is about tapping into shared values and passions, and nowhere is it written the people sharing those passions and values have to be real.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

The Twitter Tumble (or, Is This Thing On?)

May 20, 2008, by 9 comments

[Update: Amusingly, Twitter's been very unhappy since I posted this, and suggesting it's in the midst of a meltdown wouldn't be out of line...]

You can’t help but hear the drumbeats about Twitter. Depending on who’s talking, it’s either a colossal waste of time, or humanity’s last, greatest hope.

I’ve used Twitter for months now as a simple micro-blogging sidebar on my Trout Underground fly fishing blog. In that relatively undemanding capacity (and helped along by Alex King’s excellent Twitter Tools), it worked fine, though hardly perfectly.

twitterheader

Recently I tumbled for a personal Twitter account to see about all the fuss.

Well, I tried to see.

Seems like the service is down a lot. In fact, as I write this — having just shipped a messaging platform advocating a radical repositioning of a client’s product (something I was willing to crow about) — I can’t log on.

Can’t tweet. Can’t do anything. (I wrote this yesterday. Today — right now — we seem to be experiencing another temporary outage).

While not everything about Twitter is trivial, it’s clear that most tweets aren’t exactly life-changing, which is precisely why the service needs to work flawlessly.

The Experiment Continues

Still, I’m going to continue the Twitter experiment.

You can find me there hiding behind a ChandlerWrites address.

I invite you to follow along, and I promise not to clog the pipelines with “shorts or sweatpants?” subject matter.

After all, I initially “followed” a lot of people in an attempt to quickly gain perspective. And the noise level was… high. Too high.

I find Twitter an interesting idea. Perhaps once I’m following the right people, the light bulb will come on. And regardless of of whether it sticks, you have to do these things to speak about them with your clients.

Still, Twitter feels more like a proof of concept — a proving ground for something better that has yet to evolve.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

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