John Cage as far as I can tell gets credit for the quote.
Get the poster at the Imaginary Foundation. Lots of other cool prints and shirts.
Traditional Media, Like the Car Industry, Needs a Major Change
1 comments Posted by Greg at 10:22 PM
"This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model."
Traditional media know how to create great content. Now they must learn how to customize and leverage that content to captivate an audience while driving marketing results for a client.
As a tinkerer I tend to take traditional tools and apply them to day to day things. In the current start up I am at, I sometimes work on business development as well as investor relations. Which means making phone calls and emails to people that may or may not want to hear from me. And it is sometimes very difficult to gage someones interest level.
Most people try to use read receipts for emails they send out to confirm someone opened their email. This works some of the time but to me it feels invasive to the receiver. So instead of using this method I add tracking to links I send to individuals. For example I was approaching some resorts about our products and during the call I said I can send them some sample websites we manage and market. A pretty standard thing to do. But the links I provide display like this
Silver Lake Resort - in Orland, FL
The part in red is they key. I insert an identifier for the contact which allows me to then via analytics see if that person went to the site, how long they stayed, how many page views etc... Which gives me a much better idea of the person's interest. For those using Google Analytics go to the Content section, then the Content Drilldown and then search the identifier.
I am now getting my fellow co-workers into this habitat and they are enjoying it. There is a thrill of knowing what you emailed out was used by the recipient and gives you more confidence when you know they have spent sometime looking at your website(s).
1 - Have quality tweets in place before you do a big follow campaign.
I always make sure I have 3-4 good quality tweets on my profile before I start following a bunch of other people or if we are doing a big email blast with a twitter follow badge on it. The strategy here is that people may not know your company, may not know what twitter is or may not be sure how you are using twitter. So all of these people may come to your twitter page and if you have 3-4+ good quality tweets then those potential followers have a higher propensity to start following you. I know it seems basic but we have all been to some company twitter pages and bounced due to bad tweets.
2 - Be A Magpie .com = FAIL (not linked on purpose) - This tool, if you will, basically allows companies to use willing twitter accounts for their advertisements. The willing twitter accounts get paid for selling their souls and the company may get a short term boost. But this is not conversation this is advertising. This strategy may work in the short term but long term this is not a social media strategy it is a gimmick. Let the conversation happen naturally. As a company you can provide fuel to help the conversation happen but let it naturally be set on fire.
Don't get me wrong I am all for affiliate marketing on twitter but used in the proper useful context. An example would be someone tweets "looking for a good flight deal. Ideas?". A smart affiliate would @reply with a link to some deals where they get a cut.
Have some tips, leave them in the comments!
