Category: Social media

Twitter marketing during TV events

Posted on by Brian Lee

I feel bad for the people who have to manage the Twitter accounts of major brands during live events like the Super Bowl and the Oscars because it can’t be easy to stay on your toes for 3+ hours.

For example, you never know about the spontaneous things that happen, such as the safety during the first quarter of the Super Bowl or Ellen ordering pizza during the Oscars.

Here are my recommendations for tweeting during TV events:

  • Prepare tweets for every scenario. For example, “tweet XYZ if team 1 leads at halftime,” or “tweet XYZ if movie 3 wins best picture.”
  • Monitor trending tweets, hashtags and Twitter accounts relevant to the event (e.g. actors during the Oscars).
  • Like in crisis communications, create a list of everything else that could happen, from loss of power (2013 Super Bowl) to wardrobe malfunctions to flubbed lines to inadvertent product mentions, and then prepare tweets for them.
  • Have a small team accessible (e.g. same room, conference call, Skype, etc.) that can make quick decisions on what to tweet for everything else that happens.

Now here’s a list of some of the good and bad tweets during these recent TV events:

  • I wasn’t impressed with JCPenney’s tweeting with mittens stunt, in which the company purposely put out tweets with typos before revealing that it had been wearing mittens while typing. Sure it got people talking about the brand, but I’m anxious to see Q1 results if sales of mittens actually increased, because that’s the true measurement.
  • On a related note, congrats to Kia, Snickers and Doritos for tweeting back at JCPenney on the fly (e.g. Kia’s “Hey @jcpenney need a designated driver?”).
  • Ready for a shameless tweet? Try Papa John’s “Frozen wins, only at the movies. Our fresh, NEVER Frozen hand-tossed original crust pizza wins every time. #betteringredients.” I mean, really?
  • I liked Pizza Hut’s “Did someone say pizza? We got you” in response to Ellen wanting a pizza delivered.

Here’s my favorite tweet, although it did occur two days after the Oscars. This comes from @TheSimpsons, who wrote “.@TheEllenShow Oscar® Selfie: A wider view. #thesimpsons”

How AEC Marketers Can Use Twitter

Posted on by Brian Lee

Twitter is about creating conversations between people. In most industries, including AEC, conversations are often the result of sharing value with your connections.

In my opinion, one of the easiest and best ways to share value is by creating relevant content for your connections. The content can take the form of photos, videos, podcasts, white papers, articles, presentations and the like. For example, you could report on industry trends using an infographic.

The key is to reduce your non-value tweets–such as press releases, new hires, awards, etc.—because seriously, your prospective clients don’t care. Think of the person in a networking event or a party who does nothing but tout how awesome they are. Don’t you want to avoid this person? Now think about the person who tells jokes or has captivating anecdotes. He/she is the one you want to hang around.

Twitter also can help you find out what topics and trends are worthy of being the basis of your content. Search relevant hashtags (especially from industry conferences), follow other industry leaders and see what your connections are discussing.

Don’t hesitate to share relevant content from other people. Some marketers suggest a 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 ratio of sharing others’ content-to-sharing your content; however, my experience has led me to believe that as long as you’re developing original, relevant content, you don’t need to follow any ratios.

Of course, we’re just providing you a snapshot of what you can (and should) do on Twitter, especially as part of a comprehensive content or in-bound marketing campaign. But this is certainly a good first step.

LinkedIn for B2B marketing

Posted on by Brian Lee

In addition to teaching a social media class and doing speaking engagements on social media, I had the opportunity recently to talk about LinkedIn at an expo and be interviewed for a magazine article about LinkedIn.

My big takeaway is always about how LinkedIn is well-suited for research, networking, job hunting, recruiting and even business-to-business (B2B) marketing.

For that last item, it seems many people who use LinkedIn are familiar with groups, introductions and InMail, but few know about sponsored updates.

First, you need to have a company page. Don’t forget to populate it with your company’s background, products/services, etc.

When you post an update, the only people who will see it are those who are following your company page. If you’re just getting started, you probably don’t have many followers, and they probably aren’t necessarily your target audience.

To get your update in front of your target audience, you can make it sponsored, which is similar in setup to Google AdWords or Facebook ads, meaning you can be highly selective in the categories in which your audience fits. For example, you can choose geography, gender, age, industry (including which to exclude) and my favorite, job title.

Yes, this is how you can get your message into the news feeds of CEOs, HR people, etc. Think about this: how would you get in front of your selected group otherwise? You would probably have to do things like advertise in niche publications and trade show marketing.

LinkedIn offers you both a pay-per-click payment option, as well as pay per 1,000 impressions. I like the latter, as it seems more cost-effective, and you don’t pay for the clicks you do get.

I suggest your sponsored update be of some value to your audience, like a white paper, article or video, instead of some sort of solicitation. Your content should be housed on your website, and you should monitor the clicks as part of your conversion tracking (often done through Google Analytics).