Simon Whatley » advertising

What Twitter’s Promoted Tweets Business Model Means to the Ecosystem

Simon — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:13:31 +0000

In early April, Twitter launched Promoted Tweets, combining paid and organic media. Brands can now advertise promoted tweets on search pages, however the community has power over which Tweets will appear measured by Twitter’s new metric called “resonance”, which factors in behaviours like the retweets, @mentions, #hashtags and avatar clicks. Brands can now purchase CPM based adverts to promote these popular tweets at the top of a Twitter search term — even in categories they aren’t well known in, influencing awareness.

This has several implications to the “Twitter ecosystem” as a whole and Jeremiah Owyang has broken down the impacts:

Player	Direct Impacts	What They Will Do	What No One Tells You
Twitter	Finally gets a business model beyond search deal partnerships with potential to scale. Taps into deep pockets of online advertisers.	Experiment. Expect black and gray hat marketers to try to game this system, in order to obtain resonance. Twitter will constantly tune algorhythm like Google does.	Expect this to cascade to their partners and grow into the ecosystem as Twitter aggregates resonation on other 3rd party sites
Twitter Users	Have power over which promoted ads will stay visible	Initially be shocked by changes, then learn they can help self select tweets that will be promoted.. In the real time resonace world users have a lot more power	Power tweeters like celebs and digerati will be targeted by marketers to engage and resonate tweets. Twitter users that retweet tweets may be surprised to see their promoted tweets in search engine results ads.
Social Marketers	The conversation is now being monetized, with changes to the outcomes of whats expected of the online conversation and engagement.	Educate traditional marketers. These folks will try to increase resonance of tweets by interacting with community. Will build an inventory of top promotable tweets	Don’t go overboard, make sure you think of this in the larger context of integrated marketing. Avoid shiny tool syndrome. Must pay close attention to what terms are resonating with community to build inventory
Direct Marketers and Advertisers	Finally traditional advertisers and direct marketers have skin in the social game in a way they know.	Flail. Many will try to buy their way in and obtain resonation without asking why a tweet resonates. Will fight over top searched terms in Twitter, expect a lot of contests to promote tweet engagement.	Expect tension between this marketer and the social marketer if education is not completed.
Developers and Agencies	A clear goal (resonation) has been put forth, with opportunity to get a cut of the incoming advertising dollars.	Developers are waiting with baited breathe for Chirp developers conference this week to see how this will be tied in. Twitter has indicated that promoted tweets will spread to clients, expect revenue sharing to be offered	Don’t buy the first ‘resonation solution’ that comes around, expect half a dozen vendors and agencies to approach brands in the next quarter offering the ability to increase ‘resonance’ and case studies will show increase in resonance.
Competitors and Search Engines	A new player being in town a new form of advertising is afoot changing the game.	Expect nervous deals to come to the table on how search engine results can factor in Twitter’s resonance. Expect players like MSFT and Yahoo to quickly launch their version of defining how the social web should be categorized.	They will have the advantage of built in ad base of advertisers and millions more users. Exiting Twitter partners Google Search and Microsoft Bing will fold this in and reward resonance and combine with page rank, or will create their own metric to reward social engagement

The entire article can be read on Jeremiah Owyang’s Web Strategist blog.

The No. 1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands

Simon — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:26:40 +0000

Customer wooing styles: People often ask the difference between how a public relation expert goes about wooing customers versus an ad agency, a designer, etc. In his top-selling book Zag: The No. 1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands, Marty Neumeier summarizes the differences in this tongue-in-cheek visualisation.

Launching Yourself as a Freelancer – Advertise and Find Work

Simon — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 11:47:19 +0000

Advertising and finding work as a freelancer has the potential to be extremely painful and difficult. However, having made the decision to go freelance, it is likely you are actually good at what you do, which gives you a great headstart.

In the last two parts of this series, I discussed publicising yourself and networking, both of which are great ways to advertise your wares. There are, however, more traditional routes to advertising and finding work.

Advertise Your Business

Once you’ve built up a portfolio of work and contacts, it’ll become increasingly easier to advertise yourself. But intially, finding work is a case of advertising yourself. This can be achieved in a number of ways.

You can create adverts on search engines such as Google via their Adwords service, or on Yahoo! Small Business via their equivalent search marketing service.

You could also go down the slightly more traditional route and add free or paid listings to online business directories such as Yell.com and Thomson Local.

I see little value in using the paper-based business directories, since you’re likely to be operating in the digital arena, however, niche publications or magazines may be a credible option to consider.

Find Work

You’ve got the skill and experience, you’ve built an online brand and you have advertised yourself. But still you need to find paid-for work.

Essentially there are two ways to do this, via your network or via the bane-of-everyones-life, agencies. Always prefer your network over agencies; you won’t be locked into rigid contracts and you could potentially earn more money for yourself as there won’t be a cut for the agent.

Of course, if you go through an agency, you don’t necessarily need to set up a company or do any of the complicated accounting and they have a ready-built network of contacts.

I tend to mix-and-match based upon demand. There is also the point that the agency can introduce you to a client and after a period of time has lapsed, you can go to that client directly, assuming you have maintained a good relationship.

You could also do your own research into companies carrying out work in your field and cold-call or email them. If they don’t have work available immediately, you have alerted them to your presence. They are also more likely to contact you directly at a later date, as this will save them money, rather than sourcing contractors through an agency.

There is a final area of consideration; joining networks and services such as the Lemon Foundation and 99Designs. These services effectively connect designers and developers to clients needing work to be carried out. This work could be anything from logo designs and business cards to branding and websites.

Lemon Foundation is more like an umbrella company that bids for and farms out work; they do all the client facing work — winning bids, project plans and scoping etc — whilst you do the ‘actual’ work. 99Designs on the other hand is a marketplace where you have to compete on price and reputation. It is in effect an eBay or Amazon of the designer-developer world and is brought to you buy the guys who created SitePoint (a great web development resource).

Final Thoughts

Someone cheesy wrote…

Twenty first century people aren’t afraid of challenges, of stepping outside their comfort zones, of swapping lives. No more forty years with the same organisation, here’s my gold watch to prove my loyalty – it’s all about building up a portfolio of skills, identifying strengths, capitalising on opportunities and transferring the package to the next best place. Sometimes that place is you.