Twitter for Brands

The world is atwitter. Twitter, one of the fastest-growing websites on the internet, has captured everyone's attention.

Like most hot internet properties before it, the original purpose of Twitter was simple: give people a way to keep family members, friends and colleagues up-to-date with the latest happenings in their lives. In 140 character bite-sized status updates.

From its humble beginnings, Twitter has evolved into a flexible communications platform that is being used in a wide variety of ways. Every day, brands and prominent individuals are joining the Twitter bandwagon and looking to engage with their stakeholders and fans using the popular microblogging service. Even brands that you wouldn’t expect to have an interest in services like Twitter are getting involved. Case in point: Louis Vuitton is now on Twitter.

The appeal of Twitter for big names is easy to understand: some of the most popular Twitter users household names. Starbucks has over 180,000 followers, the CEO of online retailer Zappos has over 610,000 followers and Hollywood celebrity Ashton Kutcher recently beat out CNN to reach the 1 million follower mark.

But despite its popularity and the fact that just about everyone seems to be joining, Twitter largely remains an enigma for brands. How can it be used? How should it be used? What's the pay-off for the brand?

Key Considerations
Before you jump into the Twitterverse, there are number of key items to consider:

• Goals. Do you want to use Twitter to market your brand, communicate with customers or acquire consumer feedback? There are lots of different ways that Twitter can be used and your strategy should be based on what you expect to achieve.
• The stakeholders. Before setting up shop, you should identify the employees or groups within your organization that will need to be involved in order to achieve your goals. Simply delegating Twitter to a single employee probably isn’t a good idea.
• Metrics. Do you Twitter goals dictate that you acquire a significant number of 'followers'? Or are you far more interested in how many interactions you engage in? Whatever the case, by choosing the right metrics to measure your goals, you ensure that you'll be able to monitor the progress of your Twitter efforts.
• Your desired level of involvement. Twitter is 'real-time': everything moves quickly and what happened an hour ago is usually old news. As such, you should consider how much time and energy you can invest in your efforts to make sure your strategy is sustainable and doesn't fizzle out.

Getting Started

Despite the rush to get involved on Twitter, there's no reason your brand shouldn't feel comfortable standing back and observing for a while. Observing is a great way to get the hang of the service without risk and to see first-hand the ways that individuals and businesses are using it. What are other brands doing? What are your competitors doing? A little bit of research is a good idea.

Once you're ready to join the party, signing up for a Twitter account is simple. You'll be asked to provide some basic information, such as your name and email address. When it comes to picking your username, be sure to use something descriptive (eg. your brand name).

Since all content (including your bio) is counted in characters on Twitter, be sure to maximize what you convey by customizing your profile. Specifically, you'll want to fill in your bio, upload a background image and add an avatar. Like Twitter as a whole, this is all free and is crucial for establishing an effective and engaging brand presence.

Getting Involved

They key to success on Twitter is participation. While your goals will dictate how you participate, make no mistake about it: you have to participate to get the most from the exercise. This is not a passive endeavor.

Here are some good ways for a brand to start:

• Follow a few people. Make your presence known by following a few interesting people. You can be strategic here by following people who have lots of followers, have influence within your target market, etc. Don't go overboard, however. Mass-following is a no-no.
• Engage with users who are talking about you. Using Twitter's search functionality, it's easy for brands to learn what Twitter users are saying about them. This can often provide perfect opportunities to start conversations with those users.
• Twitter is really all about sharing and one of the best ways to build a following is to share information that other users will find interesting and valuable. Tip: it doesn't always have to be about your brand. Consider chiming in on other topics or providing a broader perspective. Chances are your brand has a lot to say.

For brands looking to take their Twitter involvement to the next level, here are some other things Twitter can be used for:

• Contests and promotions. Italian restaurant chain Maggiano's boosted its brand profile on Twitter by running a simple giveaway for a $100 gift card.
• Couponing. Coupons.com recently got into the act on Twitter by tweeting up coupon deals.
• Direct sales. By tweeting what it has available for sale in its outlet, Dell has added over $1m in revenue using Twitter.
• Charity. Twitter can be an effective tool for assisting charitable causes your brand is involved with.

Putting it All Together

Twitter is a lot of different things to a lot of different people and there's no right or wrong way for brands to participate. Success comes down to planning, setting strategy based on clear goals, getting the right people involved, measuring and monitoring and, finally, making the commitment to stay involved.

"Have you done an iPhone app before...?"

We've been asked that a lot over recent months. Everyone wants an app, but are we all suffering app fatigue?

All told, apps have been installed billions of times on Facebook and the iPhone combined. Given this, it's not surprising that brands are going app crazy. When done right, it can be a good strategy. After all, the costs of producing an app are typically quite low and apps have the potential to drive significant exposure for the brand through one of the the most powerful means possible: brand integration.

Thanks to the developer programs that Facebook and Apple have created, thousands upon thousands of "applications" have been produced that enable Facebook users and iPhone owners to do everything from the important (track UPS shipments) to the trivial (throw virtual sheep).

Here are some examples of brands that have used apps to gain exposure:

• Burger King. The fast food chain's Whopper Sacrifice Facebook app, which rewarded users with a coupon for a free Whopper when they deleted 10 Facebook friends, was eventually shut down by Facebook but not before more than 230,000 users completed the task and Burger King received significant press.
  
• Audi. Want to take an Audi A4 for a test drive on your iPhone? Thanks to Audi's A4 Driving Challenge iPhone app, users can create a car, select a course and race away from the comfort of their own phone.
  
• Chanel. The famous fashion brand's brings the fashion show to the mobile phone with its iPhone app. Instead of offering up a game, Chanel uses its app to deliver content, including video, news, fashion information and a store locator.
  
• Sony Pictures. When it came time to promote a new movie called 30 Days Night, Sony Pictures took a different approach to apps. Instead of building its own app, it struck a deal with the owner of a popular Facebook app called Vampires and took rebranded the 30 Days Night app for 3 weeks. The results: exposure via the tens of millions of visits the app received during that period of time and 59,100 sweepstakes entries.

As with any campaign, app marketing should be thoughtful. Brand integration should be done tastefully and users need to be provided with real value. Given the number of apps out there to choose from and the risk of app fatigue, they also need to be given an incentive to keep using the app.

While not every app is a success story, given the massive number of consumers that are using them and the relatively small costs of creating and distributing apps, app marketing is certainly worth a look.

Streaming Through Firewalls and Proxies

While working on an online TV project for the last 2 months I have realised streaming Adobe Flash video through a firewall or proxy server can be a real challenge. Flash Player's standard behaviour is to attempt to generate a connection on ports 1935, 443, and 80 using RTMP. If those fail, it attempts to connect on port 80 using RTMPT.
Adobe provides good documentation for firewalls and proxy servers but we faced an additional challenge with this project: the client made use of a proxy server that blocked all ports except port 80. Since port 80 is the third port that Flash Player attempts to connect to, there was quite often a noticeable and unacceptable delay between the time the Flash Player loaded in the browser and the time the Flash video started to play.

Since user experience is of paramount importance, we were forced to look for a solution. After some experimentation, we cooked up with a Flash component that does the following:

• 1. Creates a NetConnection object that starts the attempts at port 1935, as is standard.


• 2. Creates a second NetConnection object that waits 250 milliseconds before attempting to connect to port 80 via RTMPT.


• 3. Accepts whichever connection attempt succeeds first. Once a connection attempt is successful, the other NetConnection object is deleted.

The laws of simplicity

Simplicity? -> remove superfluous!

Check this book out: "The laws of simplicity" by John Maeda
Website: http://lawsofsimplicity.com/

LAW 1: Reduce
The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction
LAW 2: Organise
Organisation makes a system of many appear fewer.
LAW 3: Time
Savings in time feel like simplicity
LAW 4: Learn
Knowledge makes everything simpler
LAW 5: Differences
Simplicity and complexity need each other
LAW 6: Context
What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral
LAW 7: Emotion
More emotions are better than less
LAW 8: Trust
In simplicity we trust
LAW 9: Failure
Some things can never be made simple
LAW 10: The one
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful

Webby Awards announced!

The 13th Annual Webby awards winners have been announced today

Below a few links we find really interesting:
ACTIVISM:

Protect an acre!
http://www.atmospherebbdo.com/work/ci/protect/

BEST USE OF ANIMATION / MOTION GRAPHIC

Coraline website
http://coraline.com/

BEST HOME/ WELCOME PAGE

Adidas Home

http://www.adidas.com/uk/homepage.asp

BLOG - CULTURE/PERSONAL

1000 awesome things
http://1000awesomethings.com/

YOUTH

Tate Kids

http://kids.tate.org.uk/

Find out more -> http://www.webbyawards.com/index.php !

8 point Email Checklist

When it comes to building HTML emails we cannot rely on just creating semantic, accessible pages with XHTML and CSS. This is because email clients like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook all render HTML in different ways. To ensure your HTML email will be delivered correctly in most email clients we have devised Lemon’s 8 point checklist. The first 4 rules apply to you code structure and the last 4 are best practices that will help to run a successful campaign.

(1) Tables Rule



Structural tables are still often necessary for creating columns. Floats and other positional CSS properties are often disregarded in most mail clients. To ensure your layout stays the same as the designer intended use clean table structures. Remove all unnecessary height and colspan values in your table attributes.

(2) Avoid Image Blocking



In the majority of email clients, including Outlook, AOL and Gmail, your images will not be shown by default. Your recipient will have to click another link to enable them download and display.

• Therefore never use images for important content like headlines, links and any calls to action. Ensure these are in plain text i.e. rendered in he HTML
• Use “alt” text for all images.
• Always add the height and width to the your images
• Add a link to a web version at the top of your email.

(3) Inline your style’s

Many email clients will strip CSS out of the head of your HTML document so the solution is to use inline styles. Also wrap your inline styles with redundant font tags as a double backup. To keep up to date with the latest CSS support visit the Email standards site at http://www.email-standards.org/clients/

(4) Backup with Plain text

Not everyone can view HTML emails. Outlook will now use the Plain Text version if the sender is not trusted and the e-mail appears to be Spam. Also, some e-mail users opt to use plain text over HTML and will thus see that version by default. So having a text version will ensure you message reaches a wider set of users and is a good backup to have.

(5) Simplify your Content

Have clear CTA’s (call to actions). Don’t make your design too image heavy. You want your users to get message in the first couple of paragraphs. Also avoid words 'free' in the subject to get passed spam filters.

(6) Subscribed Data

You need to have the permission to email people. Ensure that the data you are sending to comes from a legitimate source so that you not spamming people who are not interested in the campaign.

(7) Unsubscribing

Always provide your recipient with an option to opt out. Make the unsubscribe process quick and easy

(8) Testing



Make sure you are testing your emails thoroughly before you send them out. At Lemon we use Lyris List Manager http://www.lyris.com/solutions/listmanager to handle all our email campaigns. Lyris is built with a feature called Email Adviser which sends you inbox snapshots of your mail in a dozen email clients. So it’s important that you are using reputed software to send out your mailing campaigns to ensure the delivery process is successful.

Good Luck!