Archive for Twitter

The Gap’s failed logo launch strikes social media gold

By Kenna Dian · Comments (0)
Monday, October 18th, 2010

Why The Gap’s latest social media strategy worked

Did you hear that the blue jean giant The Gap announced a new logo? Yeah, it didn’t create a blip on my radar either. I work in the tech biz, and I don’t shop at The Gap.

But what did get my attention is how it’s re-branding effort bombed (and was subsequently pulled) solely based on the public outcry on social media outlets.

There are many blog posts and news outlets weighing in on The Gap’s misguided design decision, and the stunning influence social media can have on corporate decisions. Some blogs even present the intriguing (if not a bit far-fetched) hypothesis that The Gap’s social media strategy was actually an ingeniously crafted publicity stunt formulated to increase holiday sales and bolster waning stock performance.

So was the The Gap’s decision to announce its new logo using Facebook and Twitter a public gaffe or social coup? President of Gap Brand North America, Marka Hansen believes they “did not go about this the right way.” Sorry Ms. Hansen, I disagree. To my mind, it is proof positive that when a company employs social media properly—intentionally or accidentally—it strikes gold. Read More→

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Categories : Branding, Communities, POV (point of view), Social Media & Social Networks, Strategy
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How to Avoid a Social Media Meltdown

By Kenna Dian · Comments (2)
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

Social Media Planning4 questions every Web team should answer

The other day, I was thinking about the latest social media snafu HP.com’s Networking zone recently ran into. Its experience is an important lesson about how dangerous displaying the musings, and sometimes wrath, of the masses can be. This led me to ponder: what questions do Website teams need to ask themselves before deciding to pipe social media content onto their Website pages? Off the top of my head, four major questions come to mind:

What is the objective? Why are you planning to use social media in the first place? This isn’t to say that your Web team shouldn’t consider social media; only that you need to ask yourself some tough questions before you start. Read More→

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Categories : Branding, Marketing, Social Media & Social Networks, Strategy
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How Twitter Can Ruin a Marketing Campaign

By Kenna Dian · Comments (8)
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

HP.com brings a knife to a gunfight

When social networking sites hit the Internet, companies spent many, many months watching it with a wary eye. But once leading IT companies (such as Sun, Dell, and Cisco) took the leap, the race to integrate social media into a company’s marketing mix was on. This has led almost every company to declare social media as a major influence—if not the cornerstone—of its future marketing strategies.

Bold pronouncements aside, the reality is this: most companies are scared silly because they don’t have the faintest idea about how and when to use social media to their advantage.

They should be scared.

As a case in point, let’s consider how HP.com’s new “Change the rules of networking” campaign and associated Web page goes off the rails. This page launches the new face of HP Networking using the perfect combination of “hip & happenin’” content. Lightbox videos. Web 2.0 behaviors. Twitter. You name it.  With all these cool new ingredients, where could HP.com possibly go wrong?

Let us count the ways.

Read More→

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Categories : Branding, Marketing, Social Media & Social Networks, Strategy
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How large companies are using social media

By Kenna Dian · Comments (4)
Monday, August 23rd, 2010

Social MediaReal people, real voices, real time

While the SMB & mid-size market are using social media to just get their name out to the masses, large companies are learning how to use social media & communities in tandem for a whole new purpose. And it is literally changing the face of IT.

Large IT companies don’t need to get their name out there. I mean, who doesn’t know IBM, HP, Apple, or Dell? I would bet that even your grandmother knows the name of one of these companies, even if she doesn’t know how to use a mouse. So, aside from using social media as a slick press release system, how do large companies use these outlets to their advantage?

Read More→

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Categories : Branding, Communities, Marketing, Social Media & Social Networks, Strategy
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Twitter for Business — Part II

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (0)
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Social media is all the rage these days. But what does it really deliver?

Ok, I need to come clean. Until recently, I haven’t really gotten my head around the whole “social media for business” thing.

It’s not that I don’t understand what Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube and the rest of the social media gang do. I get it.  It’s just that social media has always seemed to be more of a time consuming distraction than a tool that gives businesses any kind of inside edge.

The light dawned when I was writing our new report about how companies can build Websites optimized around the B2B buying process. In case you don’t know, that’s the 17 step process your biggest customers go through to make a buying decision.

As it turns out, social media plays a huge role in this process – but not where you might think. If you think about the process in three major chunks – make the “long list” – make the “short list” – and make it through the vetting process – social media plays its most important role in part one — making the “long list”.  If you don’t make the cut here, participating in the “short list” and the vetting processes won’t be a problem.

So what roles do social media play in this part of the process? Let me count the ways.

  • Social media will give you visibility with buyers who are blissfully unaware of your company and its products.
  • Lets them tune in to what current customers and the market are saying so they can add you to (or strike you from) the list — and
  • Perhaps as important, social media is the way buyers can monitor your company throughout the decision process. If things go wrong on the social Web, you’re likely to end up on the “short list” cutting room floor.

In other words, social media is all about creating visibility and managing market perceptions when it really counts.

Here’s a short podcast about the complex B2B buying process – and the roles social media – and your Website – play in this process. Think of it as a Cliff’s Notes battle plan to woo and win those big deals.

[powerpress]

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Categories : Branding, eSelling, Social Media & Social Networks, Strategy
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Twitter for Business: Lessons Learned

By Marty Gruhn · Comments (9)
Monday, October 12th, 2009

If you are tweeting for business, a split personality and a less is more strategy works best.

We’ve received several pings from readers who wanted to hear more based on Kenna’s post about tweeting for business. After three months in the Twitter box, I’m ready to weigh in on my observations — and share four pieces of advice from the peanut gallery.

This isn’t for sissies. Unless you’re a social butterfly by nature, business tweeting gets in the way of your day job. Unfortunately, if you don’t have consistent presence, your company tends to fall off the digital radar. This begs a conundrum worthy of a paraphrase from Hamlet: “Whether ’tis better to have an inconsistent Twitter presence or bag the whole concept?”  For me, the answer lies in the difference between volume and value.

Less is more. Companies that yak ad nauseum creates problems when you are on the receiving side of the Twitter fence. Based on my list of tweeting companies, less would certainly be more. Companies that bombard me with a constant stream of disconnected tweets makes it difficult for me to figure out what really matters to the company – which leads me to my third tweeting gripe.

Tell me something I want to know. The business Twitter landscape is becoming a vast wasteland where companies push “Google-esque” links instead of sharing knowledge or information in a teeny package. I’d rather know, for example, that a company received an award or launched a new product, than being inundated with links to general purpose articles and stories I don’t have time to explore. For business, tweeting should be all about creating the company’s brand one drip at a time, not proving that you can make it through a Harvard Business Review without going into a coma. Simply put, when business is the issue, your personal epiphany doesn’t create my need to know. This, in turn, leads me to my last peanut gallery entry.

Split personalities work best. The most effective Tweeters are those who have a business and personal persona – and keep them separate. This allows me to keep up with the business side of their world, and eliminates getting alerts when their 3 year old is successfully poddy trained. Sure, I appreciate that this is a milestone in their life. For me, too much information.

OK, I could change my opinions after another six months wading through the Twitter landscape — but I wouldn’t hold my breath.  That said, I’ll check in later as behaviors play out. After all, the Web is nothing if not a moving target.

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Categories : Branding, POV (point of view), Social Media & Social Networks, Strategy, Web 2.0
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Twitter | Can you tweet yourself into more business?

By Kenna Dian · Comments (4)
Friday, August 7th, 2009

At the beginning of the Twitter revolution, many of our clients swore that Twitter was a huge new channel opportunity – and they were going to tweet their way into millions in new sales. Their plans were buttressed by Dell’s announcement that it had sold over a million dollars worth of products using Twitter. (Today, Dell claims it’s two million http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2009/06/11/delloutlet-surpasses-2-million-on-twitter.aspx). Since most articles touting this claim are long on self-congratulations and short on hard metrics, we’ve remained Twitter skeptics.

Given that press stories have focused on how Twitter will keep you up to date on the minutae of what your favorite celebrity (or potential cyberspace friend) is doing, it’s been hard to see how Twitter could be anything more than an open party line in cyberspace — much less a serious marketing or sales channel. But underneath all of the chatter about  Twitter’s entertainment value, we’ve had the nagging sense that Twitter may, in fact, be a huge paradigm shift for marketing and sales.

These unrelenting messages have led us to explore Twitter’s potential as a useful business tool and track how Tweeple are using Twitter for business. Can using Twitter improve your business, even when you aren’t a household name? Is Twitter becoming a mega marketing and selling channel that no company can ignore? Is Twitter a marketing tool, a social networking tool — or both?

We’ll  be looking for the answers to these questions as we go through our own journeys on Twitter, and will be posting our experiences here. Let’s just say that, thus far, the results have been intriguing.

We welcome your experiences and questions as we report on our own. Let us know what you think!

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Categories : Social Media & Social Networks
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