I love that Twitter thing (now what exactly is it again?)!

As you may have read, last month I made the Twitter plunge! I jumped in, tweeted my every move, searched for fellow interesting tweeters, and even made a couple friends and business connections. Now that I’ve done it – I feel compelled to answer the question “So what the hell is Twitter?” that I’ve been so frequently asked over this past year. Here’s my top level take-away for you…

1. Real Time Connections. You have 140 characters to tell the world what you are doing. If anyone cares, they connect with you and follow you and you have the opportunity to do the same. My take-away is it’s kind of like an Instant Message to the world. According to companies like Dell, they’ve sold millions of dollars of product simply by announcing new deals to their followers. Others aren’t as good at it.

2. Twitter Feeds the Ego. It took me all of about 4 minutes before I had my first follower. I was pumped – I was on top of the world… I was the next rock star of twitter world. When I didn’t reciprocate and follow them, they blocked me and moved on. What??? I learned very quickly that when you follow companies and certain individuals that they will instantly start following you. A sort of interactive warm and fuzzy for you that makes you want to hang on their every word (or at least not block them). I also learned that some people feel VERY important if they have thousands of people following them – so they reach out to EVERY person in the twitter universe simply to gain those reciprocal followers. Think of a bad link strategy that’s starting to evolve…

3.Curiosity Growth. I started to follow only agency and marketing happenings, but I quickly found out it’s fun to see how the “other half lives”. I find myself clinging to my holiday candy as I see that Lance Armstrong (@lancearmstrong) is working out indoors as it’s too cold in Austin today. I don’t know why – but I love it when inspirational people like him share their every move. Something tells me if he were to sign a deal with a chocolate company and tweet about it, I’d be a new consumer for that product. Just saying…

4. Search.Twitter.com. Research has been one of my primary uses… I’ve been able to see in real-time what people are saying about potential clients, products, etc. It’s the modern age focus group.

5. Some Get It. Some… I’ve enjoyed following places like @mashable, @bmorrissey, @agencyspy, etc… But there are still some that I wonder why… To name a couple @richardbranson and @adage simply let me know when they blogged or posted an article somewhere else. If I wanted that – I’d look at their blog or somewhere else… That being said, I’m about to go twitter that I posted this blog – so something about the pot calling the kettle names…

There are a lot of new things evolving out of twitter, and it’s still yet to be seen if it just becomes a facebook application, but for now – it’s been a fun experiment that I will continue to follow @mediatwo.

New Year’s Resolutions in Interactive for the CMO

A few weeks ago I sat and watched with great interest at the Internet Summit a panel of venture capitalists as they gave their forecasts for when the economy would turn around. There were 4 panelists, and their answers started out with 12 months, 18 months, 24 months… And then it got to the last person, and I could kick myself for not remembering who he was… “I have no idea” was his response.

Finally! It is ok to admit that nobody knows… So why is everyone so intent on trying to guess what 2009 will bring for Madison Avenue? After 13+ years in this industry, you’d think that I’d understand that it’s just the “big guns” trying to sound intelligent, and the reality is all of us in the trenches who are actually defining the industry are still focusing on delivering tangible results for our clients. So with that in mind, I’ve created a New Year’s Resolution list for Chief Marketing Officers everywhere (regardless of whether ad spend in 2009 will go up or down in each channel):

Test something new: I still believe 20% of your budget should be set aside to test new campaigns, technologies, solutions, etc… And by “new” – it can be something that is simply new to you – you don’t always have to be the first out the door launching your new Facebook Connect campaign. But if you know text ads work for you, maybe give SMS ads a try in a controlled environment. Just keep testing, as people’s wants and needs are changing every day - so too should your testing.

Marketing through Search: Yes – I say this a lot… It is Search Engine MARKETING – so test different products on different keywords, test pricing and discounts, test in-store promotions… Some of you that stayed awake in Marketing 101 are starting to hear some familiar P’s… Don’t lose track of what got your company where you are today. Search is the medium - marketing is how you use it.

Set Your Metrics: This goes without saying – right? Well knowing your metrics and dictating your marketing to hitting them while keeping a good marketing mix are a lot more difficult than you may think. That being said, if you know that your product retails at $20, and you need a COGS of $10 to be profitable, make sure you have a media campaign set up as a whole that will accomplish that. Don’t judge one medium independently of another. Even though interactive may appear to be the cheapest, there are offline occurrences that affect your online campaigns.

Own Social Media: The words social media seem to now be what “emerging” media was 2 years ago… A catch all for everything you don’t understand. Grasp the areas of social media that are relevant to you. Set up Google Alerts on your company name, your competitors, etc… Own your online reputation. Set up a Twitter account for your company, set up a LinkedIn account for your company… These are all free tools that are available for you to communicate with your customer. If you find they’re not working (make sure you review your site analytics before you make that judgment), then move on. But allow your customers to interact with you in the way they want to… You need to own Social Media – not let it own you.

Happy New Year CMO’s!

It ain't viral til it is.

Classic. I will use this line from Ad Age's column today - FOREVER.

Read more here.

At M2i, we strive to build something for our clients that gives their consumer something of real value - something that is worth passing along to friends. It's probably not worth their investment otherwise...