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Advertising Cool Creativity Twitter

Want a good review for Four Lions? Ask twitter…

This is interesting…

…the honourable Rupert Britton, Dark Lord of Content Strategy here at PHD, has had a tweet picked up of his thoughts on the new Chris Morris film Four Lions, and it’s been used in an ad.

It’s the second one down…

He’s not the only one though… they’ve used about four or five, mixed in with reviews from proper journalistic organs.

Oh, and the Evening Standard.

Anyway, it’s really interesting, for several reasons.

Firstly, if you were a little short of good write-ups of your film (which I’m not suggesting Four Lions is, it’s just a hypothetical ‘if’), you could just find the tweets by people who did like your film, and use those.

Secondly, it highlights the fact that we increasingly trust (or at least marketers believe that we trust) the opinions of other people at least as much, if not more so, than those of the so-called ‘experts’.

Thirdly, if you are going to use someone’s tweet in a review… is it polite to ask? The first Rupert heard of it was when a friend called him up and told him…

Rupert says he wouldn’t have minded at all.

So why not just ask?

(If you’re listening, Four Lions folks, the very least you could do is send him a poster or something…)

Categories
Goodies Social Media Twitter Useful

7 Insanely Useful Ways to Search Twitter for Marketing

As a marketing tool Twitter gets much more interesting and useful when you can filter out 99% of the junk that doesn’t apply to your objectives and focus on the stuff that matters.

The basic search.twitter.com functionality is fine for searching things that are being said about your search terms. The advanced search function offers more ways to slice and dice the stream, but still leaves some room for improvement as it only searches what’s being said and where. From a marketing standpoint who is saying it might be more useful.

Now that the search engines are all pretty geeked up over real time search you can create some very powerful searches and alerts combining Google and Twitter.

1) Target by occupation

Let’s say you have a business that sells an awesome service to attorneys. A simple search on Twitter will turn up thousands of mentions of the word attorney, but many of them will be from people talking about this or that attorney or the need to hire or not hire one. That’s probably not very helpful for your purposes.

However, if you cruise over to Google and use a handful of operators from the Google shortcut library (more on that here) you can create a search that plows through Twitter and gives you a list of all the users that have the word “attorney” in their title (username and/or real name) – Click on this search phrase and see what happens – intitle:”attorney * on twitter” site:twitter.com – what you’ll find is a handy list of attorneys of one sort or another on Twitter.

Without getting too technical, this search basically asks Google to look in the title attribute of profile pages on Twitter – obviously you can use any word to replicate this. The * tells Google to find the words “attorney on Twitter” without regard to order or other words – “on Twitter” appears in the title of every profile page so we need that term to make sure we search profile pages only.

2) Target by bio

In some cases searching through the optional biographical information can be more helpful than the username or real name fields. Maybe you’re looking for a very specific term or some of the folks you are targeting only reference their profession in their bio.

Google search to the rescue here again. This time add the intext attribute, the word bio and our key phrase to search bios – So a search for web designers would look like this – intext:”bio * web designer” site:twitter.com. When you look at this list you might notice that none of the people on the list would have been found by searching in their title, as in the first tip, for web designer. Try it both ways to test for best results.

3) Target by location

Location search by itself is simple using the Twitter advanced search tool – if you want a list of people in Austin you would use this in Twitter – near:”Austin, TX” within:25mi and Twitter would use the location field to show you Austin Tweeters.

But . . . let’s say you wanted to target salons in Austin or maybe the whole of Texas – it’s back to Google to mix and match – (intitle:”salon * on twitter” OR intext:”bio * salon”) intext:”location * TX” site:twitter.com – we search the title, bio and location to get a very targeted list of Salons in Texas on Twitter. Note the OR function for multiple queries.

4) New sign ups

Another handy thing about using any of the searches above is that you can also use the exact operators to create Google Alerts. By going to Google and putting in your search string as described above you’ll get everything they have now, but by setting up an alert you’ll get an email or RSS alert when a new attorney (or whatever you’re targeting) joins Twitter – I can think of some powerful ways to reach out to that new person just trying to find some new friends!

5) Keep up on your industry

Some of the best information shared on Twitter comes in the form of shared links. In other words people tweet out good stuff they find and point people to it using a link. I love to use a filtered Twitter search to further wade through research on entire industries, but reduce the noise by only following tweets that have links in them and eliminating retweets that are essentially duplicates – “small business” OR entrepreneur OR “start up” filter:links – this gets that job done and produces an RSS feed if I want to send it to Google Reader. Don’t forget the “quotation marks” around two or more word phrases or you will get every mention of small and business.

6) Competitive eavesdropping

Lots of people set up basic searches to listen to what their competitors are saying and what others are saying about the competition. I would suggest you take it one step further and create and follow a search that also includes what the conversation they are having with the folks they communicate with – not just what people are saying about them, but to them and vice versa – from:comcastcares OR to:comcastcares.

7) Trending photos

Photos have become very big on Twitter and the real time nature of the tool means photos show up there before they show up most anywhere. If you want to find an image related to a hot trend, or anything for that matter, simply put the search phase you have in mind follow by one of the more well known Twitter image uploading services such as TwitPic and you’ll get nothing but images. So, your search on Twitter might be – olympics twitpic OR ow.ly (You can add more photosharing sites to expand the search).

There, Twitter just go way more interesting didn’t it?

John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine.

Via Open Forum

Categories
Cool Funny Social Media Twitter

The Story (so far) of Twitter

Categories
Funny Music Twitter

(NSFW) ‘Twitter Chick’ Music Video..

Watch with your hands over your eyes. As funny as it is wrong.

Categories
Personal Branding Social Media Tech Twitter

What do your Twitter Lists say about you?

I found out about this via @BBHLabs and it’s just one of a whole host of sites that are going to make Lists even more useful. We’ve barely scratched the surface I feel so watch this space.

Here you can build up a picture about someone and their interests just by the lists they’ve been added to on Twitter! Also quite handy is the similar lists that have been created by others on the right hand side.

To see what yours looks like add your twitter name to the end of this link.

So here’s what mine looks like:

Screen shot 2009-11-12 at 19.27.46

It’s similar to Twittersheep which builds up a picture of the people who follow you. The above is simply a natural extension and an evolution in how people are using Twitter. The difference with MustExist is that it displays info about you, compared to Twittersheep which shows information about your followers. All still quite useful to build up a richer picture of a) how people perceive you and b) who is following you.

Screen shot 2009-11-12 at 19.38.12

Categories
Digital PR Social Media Twitter

#media140 is coming, here’s your discount code..

Media 140

Media 140 is fast approaching, taking place on Monday 26th October 2009 at the Royal Institute of British Architects. If you haven’t got a ticket already then bag yourself one here and save £40 off the ticket price with the discount code ‘litman140’. Your ticket will then be £95 instead of the asking price of £135. Don’t say i’m not good to you.

Today’s consumer has a newfound power with the rise of social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, forcing brands and marketers around the world to find new ways to engage with their consumer. Brand profiles and reputations are no longer dictated to the consumer but on the contrary they are shaped and driven by consumer demand, which makes for exciting and challenging times for advertisers and marketers.

Attendees will hear ‘warts and all’ (although i’m not really a fan of warts) stories directly from the brands who are out there engaging with their consumers through social media platforms. The event brings together experts and practitioners including; Tom Bedecarre, CEO AKQA, Paul Hoskins Head of Customer Experience EasyJet and Ted Hunt Digital Communications Manager from Innocent drinks, to share and debate with an audience of leading advertising, PR, brand and marketing executives.

I’ll be going so gimme a shout if you are too, put some names to faces and all..

Finally, here’s a few names that are confirmed to be speaking;

  • John Beasley, Head of Brand, Red Bull
  • Mel Exon, Managing Partner BBH Labs
  • Amelia Torode, from the award winning ‘Compare the Meerkat’ campaign
  • James Hart, Director at leading fashion retailer ASOS.com
  • Robin Grant, MD of some agency (It wouldn’t be an event without Robin speaking!)
  • Noam Buchalter, Marketing Manager Pepperami, Unilever
Categories
Social Media Tech Twitter

Conversational aspects of retweeting..

Some of you may have heard of Danah Boyd before, she’s a fairly well known researcher in all this new media malarky. When I was doing my dissertation a few years back now on social networking and it’s value to business, I got in touch and asked her a few questions. This was before that thing called Twitter, which everyone talks about now. My research focussed partly on how people and brands were using Facebook and considering it was for an academic piece of research for University, it was something I actually quite enjoyed doing.

Now, I’m living and breathing it all daily and Danah is part of the research team in New England at Microsoft and has written a hugely scientific yet interesting and informative paper on the conversational aspects of retweeting. It’s currently in draft form with the finished copy to be published in January 2010, yet still already spans 11 pages. The other researchers involved are Scott Golder and Gilad Lotan.

The report is based on analysis of over over 700,000 tweets (440,000 or so users), taken in samples of five minute chunks between January and June 2006. This, I feel is a problem when undertaking such research. Because of the enormity of the numbers, it is expected that this kinda thing isn’t conducted and written over night. However, samples taken in 2006 will have only been focussing on the VERY early adopters. Usage patterns will have changed since then. Although I signed up on Twitter in April 2007, it wasn’t until mid to late 2008 that I really started using and understanding the service. My uses, habits and processes for using Twitter have changed since then. It’s impossible to be able to follow everyone back now for starters and I now use services like Twitterfeed which pushes new posts out that I publish here on to Twitter. It’s a lot deeper than a simple Facebook status update (which is what most compare it to who haven’t tried it out).

If ever you wondered why people retweet and what they do it for, wonder no longer!

Highly recommend checking out the rest of it here and also follow Danah on Twitter here. Scott is @redlog and Gilad is @gilgul.

A few quick facts from the research via Antony Mayfield:

  • 36% of tweets mention a user in the form ‘@user’
  • 5% of tweets contain a hashtag (#)
  • 22% of tweets include a URL (’http’)
  • 3% of tweets are likely to be retweets in that they contain ‘RT’, ‘retweet’ and/or ‘via’
  • 9% of retweets include the users own handle – dubbed “ego retweets” (though as Antony notes, the paper acknowledges sometimes this can be “a way of giving credit” or saying thank you.)
  • ‘RT’ is very much the predominant form, with 88% of the retweets using this (Tweetie please take note and change your app’s retweet function).
Categories
Cool Gaming Retail Social Media Twitter

Heralding a new era of social gaming..

I noticed this rather bullish full page advert from Microsoft in a recent issue of MCV and it struck me that we’re now entering in to a new era of social gaming. The potential is limitless.

Before it’s even available for gamers to try out today, the functionality with Twitter and Facebook on the 360 is being talked up, and talked up it should. This cannot be underestimated. It’s bringing social networking in to your living room and on your TV.  It’s also a huge USP for the Xbox 360 in it’s ongoing and bloody battle against the Playstation 3. The launch of the PS3 Slim was timely met by Microsoft with a price cut of their own and puts the ball back in Sony’s court.

For social networking to now be a selling point on a games console shows how far it’s come. This is great news for Facebook and Twitter (perhaps more so for Twitter) because it takes it to another level, that bit more mainstream. Everyone uses Facebook, Twitter is still a nice communications tool. It might help more people understand it and ‘get’ it.

Little is known how they are going to look on your TV screen and how they are going to connect to your gaming experience and whilst I hope my feeds are not going to be spammed by friends who have just gained achievement X on game X, it shows that gaming is no longer something that’s done by a stereotypically aged male in a darkened room. They are now the entertainment hubs, in your living room and providing fun for all the family.

Social Gaming

Categories
Social Media Twitter

Twitter Parody – Worth a watch.

Something starts to get really big when the spammers wade in and the jokers make fun. The below video is freakin’ hilarious.

So everyone’s going tweet this, tweet that, what on twearth is this all about and how are they ever going to make any twoney? Ok maybe with less of the tw’s but there you tw-go. Let’s forget about the money part for a moment, in a recent interview Biz Stone said that they are currently working on value, the more value they can provide through Twitter, the more it will be worth. I think they’ll be alright for some reason.

This has probably done the rounds already in the tech circles but it’s still pretty fantastic.

Categories
Online Shopping Retail Social Media Tech Twitter

#Amazonfail and a coincidental job advert

This post was originally going to be entitled ‘A picture speaks a thousand words’ and simply put up the image below but felt like it deserved a bit more than that..

Reading this is probably the best place to start.. then come right back..

I’ve been keeping half an eye over the weekend on the steadily building #Amazonfail which is incidentally the top trending topic on Twitter and there are this minute more mentions than even Easter. (For an example of it’s talkability factor, in the past hour there’s been a further 700+ mentions since I carried out the original search.)

Amazon PR Week Job Posting

It’s starting to also garner mainstream coverage now as the traditional press catches up but it is something as far as I know started on Twitter and then made it’s way through the blogosphere shortly after.

What’s happened since then? #Amazonfail was being mentioned 4 times a second barely an hour after the first tweet. A petition was started (which over 15,000 people have signed) a Google Bomb took place, and no I formerly had no idea what one of them was either but it sounds pretty damaging. A Facebook group ‘Boycott Amazon’ has been started. A poll was created with the question being ‘Can Amazon redeem/repair their reputation after #amazonfail?’ A list has popped up featuring all the affected titles – here. Some internet hackers are claiming it’s all their doing whilst the names and numbers of the Board of Directors at Amazon HQ have been published. The CTO has been also been ‘unmasked’ (and remains quiet on the whole debacle). Clearly, this is an issue that’s not going to just disappear overnight.

I’ve rounded up a few posts below. One question that everyone at one stage appeared to be asking was do Amazon have a PR manager in the UK or otherwise to deal with freak happenings like this? The advertisement to my right that I coincidentally spotted in the back of the most recent issue of PR Week would suggest otherwise. I put up the picture on Twitpic and soon after @girlonetrack (an affected publisher) retweeted it to her followers.

A few questions for you..

Do you think this is going to affect Amazon’s reputation at all? Has their silence thus far helped or hindered the situation? What do you think their response should be?

Roundup –

Blogs and Twitter coin Amazonfail by Wall Street Journal

Amazon feel the web’s wrath by Zoe Margolis

Amazon sees censorship decisions magnified through the social web magnifying glass by Becky McMichael

Amazonfail – Easter PR Disaster by Matt Churchill

Amazon = FAIL by Alas, a Blog

#Amazonfail – Timeline of WTF by Anastacia

Amazon Follies by Mark Probst

AmazonFAIL discussion thread at Metafilter

Amazonfail: A call to boycott Amazon by Edward Champion

Amazonfail – Malice or Bumble by Jessica Gottlieb

Amazon has removed it’s customer based reporting of books by Brutal Honesty

Amazon blames a glitch by Los Angeles Times

Categories
Twitter

Midlife chatterers show they like to keep it short and tweet

The following is an article written by Murad Ahmed, Technology Reporter and featured in the British newspaper, The Times, today (Monday, April 13th) so for those that didn’t see it or are over in the US and elsewhere this is for you. (I’ve added in a few Twitter cartoons just for fun..)

Twitter appears to be the embodiment of youth culture with tech-savvy and fast-thumbed teens firing off short updates filled with abbreviations about their lives. But it turns out that the keenest users are the greying brigades of the middle aged.

More mature users, led by famous tweeters such as Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross and Sarah Brown, are the driving force behind the popularity of the site. New research shows that 45-54 years olds are 36 percent more likely than the average to visit the site, with figures from comScore, the internet market researchers, showing that the majority of the 10 million Twitter users worldwide are aged 35 or older.

Twitter Cartoon

Twitter is a social networking and “microblogging” site, where users post short updates – “tweets” of up to 140 characters via the website or a mobile phone. More than 3.5 million people signed up in the first two months of this year.

Celebrities such as Russell Brand and Jamie Oliver are avid users, while Barack Obama used it as a tool during last year’s presidential elections to talk directly and quickly to hundreds and thousands of followers.

Stephen Fry, 51, the actor and comedian whose tweets are followed by about 400,000 people, has become a leading advocate for the service. “I love how Twitter confirms all too often assaulted belief that most humans are kind, curious, knowledgeable, tolerant and funny” he wrote on his blog. (Is your Twitter page a blog in the traditional form? I’m not so sure)

Celebrity tweeters have pushed others towards the site “It’s the role model thing” said Richard Drake, 51, from London. “You see Stephen Fry and think, they’re doing it, so why can’t you?” You’re not teenagers, so you’re no longer following the crowd to the same degree perhaps. “But you think, well, he’s finding it interesting, there’s something happening there, and people my age are doing it.”

Twitter Cartoon
Other social networking websites, such as Facebook and MySpace have also seen an increase in the number of older people signing up in recent months. But the simplicity of Twitter has made it most popular with the golden oldies and 2o percent of all tweeters in Britain are over the age of 55, compared with 12 percent of all Facebook users.

However, it seems that the young are being put off by the increasing number of older users. “I do think there’s a feeling that, if your parents are doing it, suddenly it’s not cool any more” said Jamie Gavin, an analyst at comScore.

Ageing tweeters also said that whereas Facebook seemed to reveal every aspect of your life – something the young seem more at ease at doing – Twitter was less intrusive, and often is used by people at work. “I only Twitter professionally,” said Ian Williams, 41, an executive at a price comparison website. “For us, it’s just another communications tool. That’s the beauty of Twitter, if you decide something is not interesting or inane, you can stop following it. It’s just not invasive”Twitter Cartoon

Categories
Social Media Twitter

Top 25 Twartoons..

Categories
Out&About Social Media Twitter

Probably not the best idea..

Categories
Out&About Social Media Twitter

Two worlds colliding: Tweeting and Graffiti

I’m not going even going to attempt to call it Twaffiti.. but how much more mainstream is it going to get? Maybe mentioned on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross next? Oh.. wait.. Coincidentally, I’m from Nottingham but it wasn’t me, honest.

So it looks as if they’ve perhaps not won over everyone just yet judging by the followup..  Such a polite way though to voice their disdain!

via Nick Burcher and QuestionMarc

Twitter Graffiti in Nottingham

Twitter Graffiti in Nottingham

Categories
Twitter

Biz Stone interviewed on The Colbert Report

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Biz Stone
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest
Categories
Goodies Social Media Twitter

So what on earth is Twitter and why should I care?

I was out with friends last night who aren’t part of the Twitter scene and make fun of me for using it because to them it all seems a bit pointless.. “I heard it was just Facebook statuses throughout the day and I don’t care what someone has had for lunch”
My cries (not literal cries) of it’s a bit deeper than that didn’t seem to cut the mustard.. so here is a presentation that Stephen Davies of PR Blogger and 3W PR gave at the ‘Don’t Panic – Guide to Social Media’ event recently in London that goes some way to answering their questions more coherently than I could!
WTF is Twitter and why should I care?
View more presentations from 3w pr .
Categories
Social Media Twitter

Social graph of your Twitter followers.

What does your Twitter network look like? Via Lolly Borel, I found out about a visualisation of who Mailana thinks you speak to the most. I’ll be honest and say it’s not 100% accurate, some of the people pictured I’ve spoken to once or twice for example. Check out yours here.

My top 3 according to Mailana are accurate however, Paul being my boss along with Jed and James who I’d say are actual *offline* friends.

1. Paul Borge

2. Jed Hallam

3. James Whatley

LitmanLive's Network

Categories
Twitter

Have you got Twitterhea?

The unstoppable urge to tweet.. Yep, I’ve got it.

hubspot-twitterhea

Categories
Mobile Twitter

Celebrities tweeting backstage at the Oscars, taking us closer to the action than ever before.

A side note – This was first written on Feb 24th but left as a draft and because I suck, unfortunately only now, in March have I picked it up again. I pondered scrapping it entirely as the currency of the article may not be as prevalent now but I still believe it brings up some interesting issues for discussion. It may also seem sensationalist alluding to the fact that now we have Twitpic we don’t need the paparazzi but this simply isn’t the case. I’m certainly not saying this is the end of the print medium, merely musing around it’s future and how it can combat the immediacy of the web.

Hands up who didn’t watch the Oscars, are going to watch the highlights at some point or who instead chose to read an article on the likes of BBC.co.uk for example which featured amongst other things all the winners? Along with all the above I read on my travels home this evening in the London Paper who rated the celebrities walking down the red carpet by who they thought wore the best and worst outfits. It’s clear we’re a nation who love celebrities and how they live their lives. We clamour for what dresses they wore, what they ate and drank, what freebies they got and who they mingle with. Before, we used to have to guestimate and imagine what it might all be like back stage.

Not any more.

Now we have Twitter. Now we have Twitpic.

It’s as if we’re there, a front row seat, you can almost smell the excitement. This is where the print medium will never be able to replicate the immediacy of user generated content and blogs. Celebrities are now even sticking two fingers up to the paparazzi themselves. How? They are snapping pics of themselves and their fellow celebrity mates and putting them up on the internet, for free. Yep, for free. Don’t believe me? See a few examples below.

It wasn’t just photos that slebs were creating though.. Using the Qik video online service, Ashton Kutcher posted two amateur videos during the party, one of P Diddy dancing to Prince’s Kiss and another of Demi Moore. He also published a clip of the couple relaxing at home before the party.

The postings humanised the stars, who are typically seen only in an immaculate, staged environment. We’re seeing a side to them that we would never normally have seen before.

Moore, meanwhile, published two pictures from her Oscars party, one modelling her backless black dress and another with Kutcher.

“I am so tired 2day & my feet R killing me from dancing but I think it was rockin’ shindig & everyone seemed 2 have a gr8 time! Nap time?,” Moore wrote once the festivities were over.

As the night dragged on and more alcohol was consumed, Combs decided to run a bubble bath.

“I’m holding an oscar rt now and takin a bubble bath!!!! God is great!!! Let’s go people,” Combs wrote on his Twitter page.

Hollywood reporter Ryan Seacrest tweeted his observations from the red carpet, including that Kate Winslet was nervous before the show (“she clinched my hand so tightly”) and that Mickey Rourke wore a picture of his dead dog around his neck.

“Ever wonder what happens if someone has to go to the bathroom on the carpet? Theres a portapotty behind the fan stands. Now you know,” Seacrest wrote.

Jane Fonda penned a few tweets herself throughout the evening, praising Hugh Jackman’s good looks and said she loved the documentary Man On Wire.

“Well, Heath’s winning and his family accepting on his behalf made me cry,” she wrote

Other celebrities particularly active with Twitter accounts include Snoop Dogg, Britney Spears, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elijah Wood, John Cleese, Michael Phelps, US President Barack Obama, MC Hammer and basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal.

Bringing online and offline together rather brilliantly, O’Neal recently had lunch with several of his Twitter fans after posting that he was at a Pheonix diner.

What I do find fascinating about the aspect of immediacy is that for example here this photo was at it happens posted within the last few minutes (and nearly 4,000 people have viewed already). It shows me in black and white who is on a programme that isn’t on until tomorrow and somehow because of that I feel more compelled to watch Friday Night with Jonathan Ross because it’s as if I’m part of it all now.

Below are a few images that are public for all to see via Twitpic. Some are from the Oscars, others are from celebrities in general. This is simply a cross section of what’s around from a very brief search and am sure it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Any that you think I’m missing that deserve a mention?

NB – I thought instead of merely updating the numbers below which were up to date as of Feb 24th, the increases are visible in brackets.

Bruce Willis just chilling out 44,240 views. (+5,794)

Russell Brand & Jane Goldman 29,957 views. (+1,609)

David Walliams 25,441 views. (+1,154)

Publicly berating the paps 24,460 views. (+5,763)

Ashton Kutcher. 22,425 views (+24,752)

Jonathan Ross 22,473 views. (+1,250)

Danny Wallace & Eddie Izzard 22,079 views. (+1,037)

Chris Martin 19,492 views. (+987)

P Diddy holding two Oscars in the air. 19,292 views. (+20,133)

Wossy’s Study 18,075 views. (+1,222)

Tim Lovejoy & Danny Wallace 3,961 views. (+429)

Richard Bacon 3,766 views. (+885)

Links for further reading –

Mashable -And the Oscar more most social media buzz goes to..

New Media Strategies – Oscar Night Buzz Report

Categories
Funny Social Media Twitter

You know it’s reaching a tipping point when comic strips start appearing..

Words cannot do this justice so here you have it. I’m obviously flattered.

socialmediablogpost1