Do Twitter and business “work”?
Still wondering if there are real business and marketing applications for you on Twitter? Take a look at an article on that very topic in the March 19 WSJ.com. This is big.
Update from Erin Creaney, CBD retail expert. See how Kmart’s making twitter work for them.
Twitter jumped the shark?
I can’t take credit for this observation. Philly creative lead Steve O’Connell called it yesterday. After seeing our favorite bird exposed on CBS Sunday Morning. (Warning: You have to suffer through a commercial to watch this.) The Christian Science Monitor was asking the same shark-jumping question as early as March 17. (Go CSM?) And check out this from The Daily Beast. And if you have time, there are about a dozen more.
Anyway. Back to the CBS Sunday video you should really watch if you haven’t already succumbed. ewwwwwwwww
C’est la vie. But here’s the truth: If Twitter HAS jumped the shark, regardless of the myriad negative implications of that phrase and the sight of Fonzi in tighty-whiteys, (you KNOW you want to see this) then guess what? It’s Tweetin’ season for marketers who have been or are still somewhat gunshy of slinging messages in the ever-expanding channel. Why? Well for one thing, it’s gone mainstream. It’s done. Remember the Facebook Sunday morning edition folks? When was that again …
Small Changes: Thoughts on Wellness 09 Conference
Eat more soup. Have some almonds. My two biggest personal take-aways from a few days at IFT’s Wellness 09 conference.
Beginning with the Center for Disease Control’s overview of America’s dietary habits (with a state-by-state map demonstrating the uptick in obesity rates from the 1980s’, replete with some of the most unattractive food photography I’ve ever seen) to the sad knowledge, courtesy of NPD Market Research, that America still feeds itself the same five basic meals for dinner in 2008 as we did twenty years ago.
Whenever I attend a show like this—a great peek into the minds of nutritionists and food scientists—I come away with the resolution that today’s the day I start my macrobiotic diet. But then, I’m prone to making sweeping, large-scale changes. Or at least prone to thinking that I will.
Which brings me to the mantra expressed over and over again at the conference: “Small Changes.” The powers that be in the food nutrition world have pretty much given up on (for good reason) the concept that the American consumer will ever kick our terrible eating habits, even with the strongest of intentions. But it took a “Joint Task Force of the American Society for Nutrition, Institute of Food Technologists and International Food Information Council” to draw this conclusion?
Waves of grain
A month has gone by since the Commodity Classic in Texas. The economy still struggles but agriculture is holding its own.
The refrain I heard over and over again in my talks with growers and exhibitors at the show was “People need to eat.”
These sentiments were echoed in the business section of the March 21st issue of The Economist. The article, titled Green Shoots has a bold call-out, “No matter how bad things get, people still need to eat.” No, I am not comparing my crack reporting with the writers at The Economist but I am calling out the mantra of the Ag world, “People need to eat.” The article is mostly about China and how their consumption rate is growing leaps and bounds.
YouTube’s Tweeting.
It’s official: YouTube has migrated to Twitter. Effective immediately, if you click the “Share” link below a video, you’ll find three options: MySpace, Facebook, Twitter. (There are more sharing options.)
Choosing Twitter takes you to your Twitter account, creating a Tweet telling your followers to “check out this video,” along with the title and URL. (Currently, the URL is not automatically shortened, but YouTube is working on that. If you don’t already use it, now’s the time to learn about TinyURL.)
From a social media standpoint, YouTube’s adding Twitter is, let’s face is, an “about time.” But it makes jumping between both interfaces even easier for people like us. Expect the feature to get more robust pretty quickly.
Want to engage customers? The answer lies within.
“Look inward.” A great mantra for self-help gurus. Too soft for marketers? How about: “Hey goofballs, really now, you’re leaving money on the table??”
Fewer than 40% of companies collect customer feedback more than annually. And much of that feedback comes in the form of same-old, lame-old standard satisfaction surveys, according to the CMO Council report released in February. Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council sums it up succinctly: “What we’re most concerned about seems to be the lack of ownership of customer experience at a high, strategic level. It should be a differentiator for companies, but most aren’t there yet.”
No kidding! We know that dialogue about companies, products and services is going on continually online. We also know that most companies don’t monitor the conversations, let alone get in on them. This is equally true for B-to-B and B-to-C marketers.
