I will be joined by top Vancouver social media experts Shane Gibson and Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega for practical advice on expanding your network and increasing sales through social media marketing. The night will consist of networking, presentations and the three panelists answering questions from both the moderator and the audience.
 
Won't you join us the evening of Monday April 13th at the Harrison Gallery. Where we will answer the question. "How can you get social media working for your business?"

 
More information and tickets here>>

There is an arms race, of sorts, going on. Yes, another one and it's really no surprise. The reality is that Twitter has dropped and ad agencies are guiding their clients down the same path as they did with Myspace, Facebook and pretty much any other popular social networking site that has emerged over the last five years.

This is what I am hearing and seeing in agency recommendations. Get as many followers as you can quickly then blather out a bunch crap and useless messaging at your followers! Yes another old school one way communication platform has hijacked Twitter. When will they learn? We are back to the eyeballs measurement again because that seems to be the only measurable metric that  makes it into the quarterly campaign review decks. It's not just traffic and eyeballs anymore. Comscore needs a new set of measurement tools. The measurement is brand interaction in the Twitterspace. The numbers matter if you are interacting well with many, then it counts.

Celebrity has really pushed Twitter to the tipping point in recent weeks and sure some of them are doing it well and others are really doing it bad! Agencies should  not build out their Twitter plan and campaigns following the lead of people like P-Diddy and Ellen. Maybe Snoop Dogg because he gets it big time, but for the love of God not P-Diddy. *Disclosure* I am a west coast guy and prefer the LA rap anyway.

Twitter is 140 characters of content. That content has to be engaging, insightful, helpful and maybe even carry a narrative. The problem is that agencies are already having trouble boiling down narrative from a 30 second TV spot to a 9 second web banner. Now they have to get down to 140 characters and it freaks them out further to even contemplate that. Hell it freaks me out but that is the new canvas. Figure it out soon before the next and even more confusing communication channel emerges.

If you gather up a ton of Twitter followers and have nothing relevant to say. Your brand will become dull and tiresome quickly and the giant swath numbers your brand has worked hard to get will have zero value.

I have been waiting to see who would be first to rock the social networking site Twitter, with an interesting and conversation worthy campaign. I can now announce that I am still waiting. This may not be a bad thing either. Skittles [Mars Corporation] have taken the conservative approach to the campaign and in doing so have not offended the throngs of Twitterers that are tweeting about the initiative. 

 

Mars Corp. have basically converted skittle.com in to a search aggregate of Twitter that displays the real time conversation of key words on Twitter that relate to the Skittles brand. They then seeded the refresh and are watching what happens. There is a little overlay that links off to other areas of the site for further exploration. It's a simple concept and in my opinion only relevant because they are first to market. This type of campaign is the 'little toe in the water' approach and is more exploratory than anything else. There is very little risk to this campaign and very little cost as well. So was it worth it? Sure if all you are trying to do it get some PR buzz then I can say it worked. There will be a little brand lift for a couple of weeks and maybe it'll hit the bottom line with a few extra boxes sold in Q2. For companies only planning from quarter to quarter its just fine. It's also just fine if you are trying to experiment with cost cutting marketing campaigns in this time of global economic bla bla.

 

Did it rock the social media world? Not from the posts and tweets that I have read. But that's not a bad thing either. Skittles are now on the radar of the social media elite and I hope that there is a part two to this so that I can stop waiting for that big day.