Is there a guerillero(a) that DOESNT love #Twitter?

There isnt much of a social media guerilla without Twitter and its 200 million users. But even the most beloved (or former most beloved tool, I should say) has its issues, mainly, profitability. Quite the issue that is, being it so that Twitter just received $800 million during its latest round of funding – those investors want their money back.

Twitter Ads Are Coming

Not quite so obviously, Twitter took well over 2 years to finally announce their new Promoted Tweets platform, which will place ads from a few select companies and non-profits at the top of your stream. These promoted tweets will only appear if you follow one of those entities, and can be easily dismissed with a click. Very similar to the small adwords placements on Youtube.

Several publications rushed to proclaim the apocalypse – Can Ad-Littered Twitter Keep Its Cool? best sums what everybody is thinking: Will we, Twitter users, stick around as Promoted Tweets go mainstream? Their main point is the now-famous line from The Social Network:

“You don’t want to ruin [Facebook] with ads, because ads aren’t cool” –Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) to a young Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) in The Social Network.

More realistically, Forrester Research marketing analyst Sean Corcoran reminded us that Promoted Tweets have been around for a while, but limited to twitter.com and search results within a few 3rd party twitter apps. Corcoran spoke with Adam Bain, president of Global Revenue at Twitter, and Bain guaranteed that “user experience is the No. 1 priority” … BLAH BLAH BLAH…

So How Can Twitter Generate Revenue (for Itself and for Your Business)?

Fellow Guerillero Mitch Joel was quick to raise the point that Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey have been debating all this time: Is Advertising The Future Of Twitter? Mitch raises a really good question – are we limited to advertisement to create revenue? Does Twitter really have only this most-obvious path to create revenue or is there some more creative, less intrusive method of making money?

One of the coolest ideas – at least the one with the coolest name – revolves around Deep Data Mining – accessing (or granting access to) endless amounts of user data to … target better ads? Anyway, the name of the idea sounds cool.

But quite honestly, ADS ARE A NECESSARY EVIL. Okay, as a marketer, I’m clearly biased, but the truth is users are very much aware that Twitter (or any service) cant be awesome AND free at the same time. See Pandora, Spotify, or any other “FREEMIUM” service out there. Did you ever hear anybody say “I’m quitting Facebook because it has ads” ?

Give Small Business a Tweet AdWords

Imagine you run a cupcake shop and you’re able to show an ad to users 20 miles around your store that used the keywords “birthday” or “party” or even “cupcake” within their tweets? Your ad is shown in that user’s stream moments after they tweet, from your own twitter account, and it’d look exactly like one of your regular tweets. Both highly targeted and extremely timely.

No “Stickyness” – no need to keep the ad floating on their timeline permanently. No annoyance, just a very well-timed display placement. Having an option to repeat such tweet every hour or so (as long as not more frequent than hourly) would guarantee a real impression.

If Facebook did make $1.86 Billion, as mentioned in Fast Company’s article, I bet at least 50% came from small businesses spending a few $1000s within their Facebook Ads. Small businesses are the driving force within Adwords, and it made Groupon a multi-billion dollar company. I love using Twitter for local Social Media campaigns, and having a tool like that would benefit a huge amount of businesses.

Am I totally wrong? How bad would Twitter (or any other social network) have to fill its stream with ads for you to stop using it? If that happens, do you plan on switching to Google+? Let us know in the comments.

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The Stupid

Chrysler’s snafu was perpetrated by someone with access to the Chrysler Twitter feed. They apparently thought they were using their own account, but inadvertently used the Chrysler one when they complained about traffic in Detroit and dropped the f-bomb. Oops.

Aflac’s issue comes courtesy of Gilbert Gottfried, who somehow thought it would be a good idea to crack jokes about Japan’s recent crisis on his personal twitter account. (Really, Gilbert? Wow.) While the actor eventually took the offending comments off of his page, the damage was done and Aflac unceremoniously canned his ass.

Welcome to the Fishbowl

My grandmother used to say “Fools names and fools faces are often seen in public places.” How right you were, Gram. People forget that the internet isn’t a private place. Period. We’ve talked about privacy on Facebook before. It doesn’t exist there or on Twitter, Myspace or anywhere else online. In a world where everything is a quick Google search away, you need to consider the repercussions of everything you do online.

These are two different examples of social media snafus. With Chrysler, the employee was careless, and in the case of Aflac, their spokesman was an idiot. Yes, it was his personal profile, but that doesn’t matter. When you are a public figure, that’s the price you pay. So how can YOU avoid making a similar mistake?

Separate Accounts? Just Fooling Yourself

I’ve heard of people using separate Facebook accounts, or using FB for work and public and MySpace for personal, but that is still a great way to tempt fate. The Chrysler employee thought he was using one account when in reality it was the other. That could just as easily happen to you. You think your updating your personal profile and the next thing you know, clients and the public are asking you about your date Friday night. Not a good solution.

I don’t have easy access to any of my clients accounts on my phone specifically to avoid this situation. When I mobile social update, I never have to worry, because I know it’s my account, period. I’ve purposely made it so I have no access to client accounts on my phone because this very situation was immediately apparent and avoidable. The guy at Chrysler was an idiot for having such a huge client even near his personal account. Access it from a real computer. It can wait to be updated while you drive to and fro.

Another Simple Solution

If you won't say it here, then don't say it!

Ultimately though, my solution for this is the same as for Facebook privacy concerns. Stop putting things online that will embarrass you! If you wouldn’t say it out loud in front of your church, don’t put it online. That’s why we have phones and email, for sending more personal stuff. And if it’s real personal, tell them in person. I know my clients are going to be friends on Facebook, and that some of them will follow my twitter. I wouldn’t drop the f word in front of them, so I won’t online either. It’s not real hard.

Just THINK before you SPEAK.

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1. Social Media and Privacy – A Simple Solution
2. OAuth and T.CO and How They Affect Twitter (And You!)
3. Social Media Marketing for an Online Store?

Twitter stays at the front of user privacy protection

Hello Guerilleros! Recently, the Guerilla Chefe received an email from Twitter discussing two big changes they are implementing. These improvements will be unfolded over the next couple of months. More than likely, a few of you also received the same email, but perhaps, you were a bit confused. Well, lets clear that up.

Update #1- The Rise of OAuth!

The first update is for new authorization rules for applications. This change will begin implementing OAuth, an open standard that will not require you to hand out your password to programs anymore.

Much like a valet key, OAuth gives applications very limited access to your account, so unauthorized users can’t hijack your feed. And you can control exactly how much access this key permits.

And, applications are no longer allowed to store your password. That’s great. You no longer have to worry about someone stealing your phone and gaining access to your password. And lets face it, the majority of people use the same password for almost everything, so keeping it safe is pretty important.

Update #2 – See Where You’re Going!

We comon folk will start experiencing the t.co URL wrapping. This is a n order to provide better content.great feature too. No longer will you need to fret over following a link in a Tweet. Before it even gets to you, it is screened to make sure it’s not affiliated with any sort of malware.

Plus, with the URL wrapping, you’ll actually be able to see where the link is taking you. No more clicking a link to go to amazon, and ending up at 4chan.

Also, Twitter plans to collect data on the sites we click through to, to enhance user experience. I think that is just market speak for “So we can more effectively target you with ads”.

In light of all the problems Facebook seems to have over privacy, it is nice to see a social media site trying to stay ahead of the curve. These updates, while not exactly super cool, are important, and will help protect you and your clients in the long run.

Related posts:

1. Is The Dell Outlet Twitter Campaign Success Duplicable?
2. Integrating Social Media – Blog RSS to Facebook to Twitter Automatically
3. Improve Your Chances To Go Viral On Twitter With Simple Snippet

Dell Outlet Twitter Campaign Duplicable???

Guerilleros, my sincere apologies for completely abandoning this community for almost 3 months. Hopefully you were able to survive without my guerilla tips

In fact, from the Feedburner notifications I’ve been receiving, traffic to the SMGuerilla was not badly damaged. So let’s address that right now.

Recycling Ideas Make Them Fresh?

No, of course not – just like Recyclables are still trash, despite their higher value. But a wise man once said that there are no original ideas, so I’m putting my recycled Guerilla strategy to the test.

I’m sure you heard about the impressive success that @DellOutlet generated: over $2 million in sales from Twitter alone.

Great, huh?

Here’s the challenge

Can the same be done for an Online Fashion Boutique?

I’ve created an @Outlet account for them and fired up all of the inventory they had put aside for “liquidation”.

The next step was to create a special coupon (in this case, tweet10) to serve two purposes:

1 – Tracking (of course, Analytics helps too)

2 – Exclusivity (only followers have access to these great deals).

Here’s where things go a little South:

The company prefers their sales staff focused on “more important things than Twitter”.

Can Twitter create revenue?

Is Twitter A New Sales Platform?

The real reason behind Dell’s success was that they had a real person tweeting, interacting, and actually performing extensive customer service work. They shifted the focus off Dell and started retweeting quotes, participating on #followfriday, and answering @replies.

But is it the real reason? Or was Dell simply the 1st big corporation to try such strategy and benefit off of novelty?

Here’s where my guerilla suspicions come from:

• None of the deals were actually that much cheaper or exclusive
• Dell.com/outlet existed prior to the twitter account

Our Strategy

While the sales staff is focused on more important stuff, and since they’ve paid me for all the work upfront, I decided to run without them.

• My software is updating their outlet account with offers every 10-15 min -
• All offers point straight to the final sales page with that specific item on display.
• We go in once or twice a day to check for @replies.

Here are the stats after 10 days of campaign:

• 114 Visits from Twitter.com
• 69 followers (as of 2/17 at 12:35am)

Considering their usual traffic source is PPC, 114 visits would cost $45.6 (at a cheap $.40 bid).

So even if the campaign turns out less than ideal, they’re at least looking at a cheaper traffic source.

What about you?

What do you think it’s going to happen to this automated Twitter sales process?

Leave your comments!!!

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Integrating Social Media Is An Advanced Guerilla Move..

So yesterday I posted about a social marketing manual for small businesses and I got a couple of questions in regards to the automatic updates from blog to Facebook and from Facebook to Twitter.

Well, here it goes:

Linking Your Blog To Facebook

If you click on the link above, you’ll watch a video tutorial I made a couple of months ago. Facebook changed A LOT since then, but the concept is the same.

1. Find Your Blog RSS Address

Usually, it will be something like YourBlog.com/RSS. Write it down.

Log into your Facebook account, and click on Notes.

Click on the Notes icon

Click on Import Settings (if you’re not importing any RSS, it may show Import Notes)

This tab will be on the upper right of your NOTES section

Then, all you have to do is enter your RSS address into this next form and click IMPORT

enter your RSS address and hit Import

Alright. Everytime a new RSS feed goes out (you write a new post), FB will display your post in full, as a new note.

Now, from FB to twitter, it’s even simpler (this is only for Fan pages):

Go to Facebook.com/Twitter

You should see a screen like this (with your Fan pages)

From there, you just have to follow the instructions. Put your twitter log in and password, and you’re good to go.

Remember – Facebook is weird – sometimes it will update Twitter, sometimes it wont. I havent spent enough time to figure it out, but I know it works.

Let me know how it goes for you. Also, I’m thinking $47 for the Social Guerilla Manual. What do you think?

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We'll help you go viral on twitter, so you'll maybe get off of it.

Guerilleros, this will be quick because my offline guerilla is taking up too much time. What I’ll show you today is a quick tip for lazy viral marketers.

I bet you’ve already seen the tweetmeme plugin, which automatically inserts a new status message into a user’s own twitter account.

TweetMEME Plugin helps viral strategies

That is a major twitter marketing tool, and I highly recommend you install it on your blog. After all, the easier you make for people to syndicate your content, the more they will. If you do nothing, you’ll receive nothing. That’s guerilla karma.

But what if you’re looking to add some twitter marketing juice to a good-ole website? What? No wordpress plugins?

Viral Twitter Marketing Snippet for Non-Wordpress Sites?

Yeap, there are still places where a widget doesnt quite work. For those places, you can use a simple HTML guerilla code:

The only thing you have to pay attention to is that you cannot leave any spaces on the code, so you have to use + whenever you have a space.

For example, if I wanted to tell you to please retweet this awesome post, I’d write the following line of code:

<a href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=RT+@leosaraceni+Gave+me+this+cool+twitter+tip+at+http://socialmediaguerilla.com”>RETWEET ME</a>

It works even better when you have a banner image, or even a simple twitter logo. Check out how I merged this technique at my non-wordpress site, while I was writing about keyword research with google insight.

That’s it for today folks. Be creative with your guerilla, and always include viral twitter thingys on your content. As you know, twitter is profitable for a bunch of people (except its creators), and it will help your social media guerilla.

Talk to you soon!

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