Twitter is Down – “no pulse for the Planet”

I am addicted to Twitter. I need to get a life probably. Its down – here’s the status blog… Anyway this post  (w/ongoing updates) on TC is very readable (and pretty short) and I like thier suggestion of 15 things to do when Twitter is down…

Update: Its obvious I can’t even tweet about Twitter being down. Instead I am writing a very short blog post. Going to go call some friends now.

Three Short Links: 06 July 2009

Here are a few interesting posts and links for a Monday. btw – Happy belated 4th of July to all my American friends…

1. A New Venture Firm’s ‘Secret Plan’ – interesting short piece on NYT worth a read, be sure to check out Marc Andreessen’s comments.

2. It’s Here! iTwitter: The First Twitter App to do Push – another reason for me to get that iPhone and quick…

3. TrustedPlaces’ CEO on LocalPeople – a short interview with the CEO of UK based TrustedPlaces about the new local search partnership in the UK with a newspaper group. This deal/move looks very smart and I will be watching to see how it goes. In the UK market, I am a firm believer that ‘local’ is still an open space waiting for better services to emerge and that there is still lots to play for.

Also, have to plug the sweet post Greg Sterling did – FB v. twitter -  about our social media marketing case study. Be sure to check out the comments as there useful additional info in there as well.

Another Social Media Slideshare Deck

Ok, maybe we are going a little bit social media mad here on MediaViking island. We can’t help ourselves with Twitter growing faster than a Saturn V rocket on the way to the moon. Plus all the good research/discussions going on around how we converse, tweet and retweet as well – and somre more here and here. This all adds to our conviction that we still have a lot to learn about how socia media works and its going to be fun.

So, I was out pitching another social media marketing project to a very interesting high street shop. Well its more than just a shop and it should prove to be a great vertical case study and successfulon social media… But I can’t say anymore yet in order to protect the innocent. As part of this pitch I threw together a very rough and ready intro deck to socail media and an outline pilot plan (note:  some slides have been edited out).

In the spirit of the new socialism I am posting up this deck to share:

Cheers to Social Media – a social media marketing case study

Back in March my colleague Simon B and I spent some time promoting a beer festival via social media. We took on this project with the specific goal of experimenting to see if social media, and in particular Twitter, could be successfully leveraged to drive people to a real world event. Cutting to the punch line, yes we were successful.

We have now published a short case study on the results of this social, which you can see below or by going directly to Cheers to Social Media on Slideshare:

One of the key findings was that there is a positive Social Media ROI. For this campaign (or event) we managed to drive:

• 63% of attendees were a result of Social Media Marketing
• £571 revenue per 1 hour spent on Social Media
• £11.41 for each £1 spent (=11x ROI)
• 5.6% total cost of sale for revenue generated by Social Media

We also believe the ROI can be significantly increased by deploying ‘emerging’ Social Media best practices and development of better tools to manage campaigns and review data (ie, a social media analytics work bench).

The primary lesson was that with attention at a premium,  Social Media does indeed provide a great platform to ensure the success of marketing campaigns and in this case a real world event. In particular Twitter and Eventbrite proved cost effective and easy ways to drive awareness and consumer actions (e.g. attendance, footfall, purchases ).

Interesting to note that Facebook underperformed on what we expected. We also found that social media magnifies the value of search, at least for something very time based (ie, event).

For the event microsite we had 3175 unique visitors  during the promotional period and the traffic sources were as follows:

• 61% search (Google 58%)
• 24%-38% social media (*estimated low end of 24% to as high as 38%)
• 4% blogs

As a follow-up – “sort of  real time mini case study” – we are finding that social media again is proving a powerful way to drive awareness and interest in the actual case study!

Cheers To Social Media is currently being showcased on the ‘Business & Mgmt‘ page by our editorial team [slideshare] …

An additional proof point for success if using social media – here’s the screen grab is below.

Back on Facebook – have to come clean

Ok, I am going to have to ‘eat crow’ on this one. I am back on Facebook and actually finding it much better second time around. I’ll be back to explain more on this rift at a later date… On a side note: new rule for social media – ‘do not update your FB status via Twitter.’

Is Twitter Missing the Boat?

Looks like Twitter is killing outbound SMS (ie – getting updates to your phone) in the UK for now and as TC UK points out this doesn’t look like a good business model or strategy. Wake up! You are leaving money on the table guys. I know its summer and the surf is up out west, but this is not a smart move. One of these days Twitter does need to start trying revenue models (I’ve got some solid ideas for them and others in the Web 2.0 space  who need to start generating some cash)… Twitter me at AFullerView if you want some high value advice – for free if you act fast…

Funny Videos – first Paris, then Twitter

I meant to put this up for the weekend, but alas along came the Olympics and I got sidetracked…

Paris runs for president on Funny or Die – funny, hot… The NYC piece on this.

The Rise & Fall of Twitter you view at TC (the embed is banned by WordPress.com, why I don’t know)… If you have a weak sense of humor do not watch this video it will only annoy you.

Funny or Die simply rocks and thanks to TC guys for the parody.




Now this Sounds Sweet (Phweet) – voice calls via Twitter

This post on Tech Crunch UK – Start voice calls via Twitter? No way! Way. – is very cool and sounds pretty exciting. Its too bad I am on holiday today and have an afternoon packed with playing with the kids (its still hot so water fight later in the garden!). Let face it its much better to be playing in the real world than being a tech geek online . But I will be sure to check out Phweet tomorrow.

Change This – cool site

I was reading Gapingvoid today as I was surprised to see he quit Twitter. Maybe there really is a trend toward real social networking? Anyway for this post I found kmy way to ChangeThis – an entire site of manifestos.

ChangeThis: is creating a new kind of media. A form of media that uses existing tools (like PDFs, blogs and the web) to challenge the way ideas are created and spread. We’re on a mission to spread important ideas and change minds.

Lots of cool content on this site. I think this will provide some good reading on my train trips over the next few weeks…

Fun with Twitter

Ok, I am now convinced I have to re-start using and posting to Twitter! RWW has a nice piece on ways to have fun with Twitter.