Comments on: Using Twitter for Retail Marketing [Video + Summary]

By: RoCT 4 | Base Camp Communications

RoCT 4 | Base Camp Communications — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:27:48 +0000

[...] Using Twitter for Retail Marketing (GetElastic) – “If you’re going to use Twitter, keep your sales tweets and customer service tweets separate. Some people will want to get your deals, some your customer service – don’t mix the 2 or you’ll turn off those who don’t want certain messages. If you’re doing sales promotions, unique and time-limited deals can work well.” [...]

By: Jon Jennings

Jon Jennings — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:37:57 +0000

@Linda – Unfortunately I’ve since discovered that I can’t claim to be the first to coin ’spitter’… I guess it was too perfect not to have been thought of before.

http://twitter.com/jonjennings

By: Linda Bustos

Linda Bustos — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 04:27:55 +0000

@Jon, “Spitter” – I like it.

What’s your twitter URL so I can follow you?

By: Rhett McNulty

Rhett McNulty — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:19:23 +0000

I have seen users promoting on twitter that allow people to both ‘listen’ (follow) and contribute back to the tweet in order to win goods. I think one is called DVDquotes and there are other larger retailers promoting games and contests in order to gain stickiness so that they can more successfully disseminate other info.

Whether these intial retailers are successful or ad networks like http://twittad.com/ survive twitter is a great place to be monetized it will just take some trial and error to figure it out.

By: Techvibes|Blog|Calgary,Edmonton,Kitchener-Waterloo,Montréal,Ottawa,Portland,Seattle,Toronto,Vancouver,Victoria

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:59:20 +0000

[...] Get Elastic blog. In this video, they talk to SEO bloggers Todd Malicoast and Michael Gray about using Twitter for retail marketing. While Twitter can often be simply a venue for random banter amongst procrastinating geeks, one [...]

By: David

David — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:11:45 +0000

“Command line for Social Media” – I love it! That’s a great way to think of Twitter.

By: Jon Jennings

Jon Jennings — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:13:44 +0000

I think it’s an excellent mechanism for “listen only” customer service. As for sales stuff… “in stock”, “out of stock”, “sale – only 50 left” are an excellent use of the medium but I suspect most retailers will just use it as a shortened replacement for their existing emails “click here to see this week’s sale prices”.

There’s good & bad users out there…

Good user: Comcast have someone who leaps into action if their name gets mentioned on the Twitter public timeline… someone tweets to their own friends about their service being down or their billing being messed up and the service dude leaps into the conversation and fixes things. Naturally the tweeter tweets ecstatically when the problems get solved. Being a tech-heavy audience, this works especially well for Comcast – I’ve heard references to this several times on tech podcasts (and look – they’ve just got another free mention!).

Bad user: my Twitter profile mentions that I live in Vancouver and in the last week I’ve had 4 total strangers follow me. When you check out their feed it’s clear they’ve just searched for everybody in Vancouver & followed them all in the hopes of getting views for their own profile – they’re following 2000 people, being followed by 10 and promoting their music or conference. I think we need a cool catchy name for Twitter spam. Spitter anyone?