As if you needed any more reasons to hate John Mayer…

Over the weekend, James Duthie posted an excellent piece entitled ‘Twitter whoring goes mainstream” – a brilliant rant about singer John Mayer plugging products via his twitter stream.

First there this:

And then this:

Horrendous!

This sort of behaviour, ladies and gentlemen, is why I worry about the future or Twitter, and any social network that becomes too popular.

Talkin’ Skittles

This is fairly interesting. Skittles have changed their homepage to a link to a Twitter Search on Skittles.

All sorts of conversation, is happening right now about it. I mean RIGHT NOW:

ryancarson :
http://skittles.com
is now a Twitter search for the word “skittles” – Interesting (via @laughingsquid)

sushimonster : I can imagine the ad agency’s pitch now to skittles… “We’re not going to design you a new website. Your site will be THE INTERNET”. $80k pls

durbin : has anyone else heard about the skittles salmonella outbreak? be careful tasting the rainbow, its deadly.

emilychang : watching the tweets about skittles coming in and LMAO. the backlash has already begun. geek irony rules.

j3thr0 : I have a sudden craving for Skittles

and, ahem, my favourite:

ivoteforart: I’d rather spend my pocket money on a great piece of affordable art at
http://www.ivoteforart.com
, rather than a measly packet of Skittles

This graph, taken from Twitscoop, shows just how much buzz there has been in the last two hours:

To be honest, I’m not really sure what to make of this tactic. It will definitely create a bit of cheap PR for them, as media and bloggers alike talk about it. And then it will probably fizzle into nothing. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. At least they’re having a crack, I guess.

What’s your take?

Social Media – Listen, Say Sorry and Move On

This post is not a rant about why Big Brands don’t belong in Social Media. Nor is it a plea that that you HAVE to get your brand on Twitter and any other hot social media property de jour.

It’s about one of the really great benefits of Social Media marketing – If you mess something up, you can just apologize, learn from your mistakes, and move on.

Look at Telstra Big Pond for example. Clearly, they set up a Twitter account before they had ANY idea about using Twitter – as illustrated by their first 5 tweets shown below:

I could sit here and whine and moan about how “Big Business” don’t get it, like i usually do. But I won’t. Because that’s irrelevant.

What is relevant is BigPonds most recent 5 Tweets:

Did you see that? Real Humans instead of robots. Telstra learnt, probably quite quickly, that Twitter wasn’t the place for automated responses. They listened to some feedback:

They wised up. They learned their lesson. They re-thought their approach to Twitter. They got some real people onto the case. And they kept going with it. Now Telstra BigPond … they have over 500 followers.

My point is this. The great thing about Social Media marketing is that if you make a mistake, it doesn’t really matter. All you need to do is learn from your mistake, apologise, and move on. It’s that simple. And it’s just as true for a big corporations as it is for a small business using any type of social media tool.

There are countless other examples of forward thinking brands that experiment with Social Media, but don’t get it right the first time. And that’s OK. No one remembers if you fumble in the first place. And even if they do, you can recover from this easily.

Just listen, say sorry and move on.

ROI and 2.0 don’t mix

I have to say, I agree with DJ Francis. The whole, “What’s the ROI of web 2.0 / Social media?” debate is a pointless one.

My two cents on the issue:

The ROI is in the learning - You’ll gain a whole chuck of return from the learning that you get from just being involved in social media. Return on Investment doesn’t always have to be a financial return on investment.

Marketing is no longer linear – It’s unconventional. You don’t just plug in a strategy and get results anymore. You list. You respond. You make mistakes. You learn. You try again. You keep trying.

Marketing, like it or not, can’t always be measured in a spreadsheet. It’s serendipitous. That’s not a bad thing.

You don’t need a strategy document to listen to your customers – At the end of the day, all of this social media stuff is just a vehicle hear what your customers are really thinking. And if that’s not part of your plan, you’re in trouble.

Social Media keeps you ahead of the game - The innovators didn’t wait around to see if their social media campaign delivered ROI. And as a result, they’re already ahead of the game. Take a brand like @Zappos. They’ve expermented succesfully with social media tools such as Twitter. And now they’re two steps ahead of everyone else.

Who says 1.0 tactics are working, anyway? - Before we start going after social media, let’s not forget that the traditional marketing approach isn’t exactly working its socks off. Does anyone think that Coca Cola actually generate ROI with a new bottle shape or any other futile marketing exercise?

It’s free! – You don’t even need to spend money on this. Just time.

So the question should no longer be, “Is it worth getting involved in Social Media”. The questions is, can you afford not to?

Twitterise … Shitterise

Today I learned about Twitterise, a Twitter Marketing tool that let’s you schedule messages for future publication, for sending out press releases, or advertsing messages.

It completely misses the point.

Here’s what their website says:

Twittertise allows you to advertise on Twitter and track the success of branded communications with your customers.

Using Twittertise you can schedule your communications on Twitter and using URL tracking technology measure the effectiveness of your traffic driving techniques on the platform.

So, what’s wrong with this message? Well, let’s pull it apart, shall we:

1. “Twittertise allows you to advertise on Twitter” – They’ve got it wrong from the first sentence. Anyone who thinks Twitter is a vehicle for advertising doesn’t get it. Advertising does not belong here.
2. “track the success of branded communications” – This phrase just feels slimey. The reason a brand would use Twitter shouldn’t be to track success, it should be to make connections with people. And what exactly does “branded communications” mean anymore anyway.
3. “with your customers” – Twitter is a place for humans to talk to other humans. Start thinking of Twitter as a vehicle for “customers”, and you’re bound to turn them off.

Now on to paragraph 2:

1. “Using Twittertise you can schedule your communications on Twitter” – Scheduling communications? So Twitterise is suggesting you should send out messages when you’re not online? Which, to me, sounds like spamming.
2. “measure the effectiveness of your traffic driving techniques” – Wrong wrong wrong! You should never be posting tweets to drive traffic. And who even talks like this?

Now don’t get me wrong here. I use Twitter to announce news and offers on my site. I’ve got Twitter search feeds set up so that I can be alerted if you’re talking about me. I’m finding it to be an incredibly cool tool to keep in touch with customers, friends, and people I admire.

I’d recommend that big brands do the same. There are definitly good reasons for joining twitter.

But like any other social media tool, the 1.0 approach doesn’t work. It’s not about spamming. It’s not about measuring and tracking. It’s certainly not about driving traffic. It’s about real, human connection. It’s about conversation, individuality, personality.

So if your brand’s Twitter feed is being driven by an automated service, and not a real person, you don’t know a thing about what marketing is about anymore.