Every now and then you come across a parked domain page that makes you stop and chuckle, and today is just one of those days – thanks to my colleague at MediaVest , David Lindop.

Fancy a new job????

A case of someone having a laugh – or freak occurance? You decide….

In one of the bravest social media campaigns in recent times, Skittles turned over the shop space to the general public. Not their real shop space but their virtual one – and integrated their homepage with Twitter. This sent the blogospere and microblogging sites alight with buzz regarding the campaign, not least Twitter. However, the page has now been taken down to be replaced by their Facebook page

Skittles Social Media homepage

The initial response was overwhelming and I would suggest well beyond what Skittles would probably have been expecting, however this turned sour on Tuesday, as a number of ‘Twitter vandals’ started tweeting profanities which ended up on the Skittles homepage. Whether or not this type of activity should have been foreseen by Skittles is another question, however it is unlikely we would have seen the same level of buzz had this been deeper embedded within the site. The whole campaign was based on impact and impact was certainly what it got, however by trusting consumers with content, in a medium where they could not control the conversation – they lost control of the conversation and tone of conversation on a very public forum.

Given the well established nature of the brand, I personally believe it was slightly naive of the brand to undertake such a brave step, however well intentioned it was. That aside, for around 24-36 hours I would suggest Skittles would have been extremely happy, however it was always (imo) a risky manoeuvre – and it proved as such.

For that reason, I would suggest the following lessons should be taken from the campaign:

1. Undertake due diligence before you undertake the campaign. Make sure you understand the full implications of the campaign, including both pros and more importantly cons.
2. Choose your medium carefully. Twitter is the current flavour of the month, but it is an unmoderated forum and as such is not without considerable risk. Other channels such as Facebook or blogs, could provide a far more manageable forum in which to have such a discussion, which could be seeded by channels such as Twitter.
3. Ensure your monitoring tools are in place, you need to know what is happening quickly and effectively. There are a number of online monitoring tools out there including Radian6, Sentiment Metrics,  Market Sentinel,  Trackur, even Google Alerts will suffice.

Despite the fact it has ended slightly unceramouniasly, I can only applaud Skittles on the campaign to a certain extent. If nothing else it has given the rest of us a fantastic case study on social media and the power of word of mouth.

I did  a post a while back on 10 UK Search Marketers you should be following, and given its been over a month since that post was written, I thought it would be interesting to see the effects of new followers in terms of some of those people included within the piece (as a follow up I guess to Dixon Jones (@receptional – and highly worth following for those that aren’t) piece – A Blog Link is worth 5X a Comment Link.

Using TwitterCounter, I have revisisted some of those profiled to see what impact it had, firstly Jon Myers – and one not originally included – but who followed up on the post very well (Dixon mentioned above). I would explain at this point, that Photoshop and me do not get on very well together and thus the lack of arrows on this is due to that – however I would draw your attention to the 6th January and the following are apparent

• Significant spike in followers round the date of the post and subsequent days
• Spike followed by plateaux. This was the case in nearly all profiles – PatrickAltofts excluded – which just seems to have a constant spike on it.
• Strangely – despite being heavily involved in the initial ‘promotion’ (Kevin Gibson @SEOptimise sphunn the post – and was one of the first to read), followers to @KevGibbo seems to take longer than those of other ‘participants’
• Higher follower increases seem to have been experienced to those at the top of the post, reducing for those at the bottom (similar profile I would suggest to SERP behaviour). This was one of the points highlighted in Dixons earlier post.

Increases in followers - @JonMyers and @receptional

Patrick Altoft (@patrickaltoft), Kevin Gibson (@KevGibbo) and Andrew Girdwood (@AndrewGirdwood) follower profile

Dave Naylor (@davenaylor), Ciaran Norris (@ciaranj) and Lisa Ditlefsen (@lisaditlefsen)

It should be noted there was one user, possibly most people wouldn’t have heard of – and it was interesting to see the effect of followers for him. Dan Alderson (@pinje) was added to see what sort of effect such a post would have (I will be honest – I in no way expected the response it got) – however it was interesting to see the knock on effects of the post on his follower profile below.

@pinje visitor profile

It would be interesting therefore to further explore this moving forward, certainly in terms of how this affects the increasing numbers of brands entering the Twitter arena, with the likes of Thomas Cook, Dell to name a few who are already in the Twitter domain.

For many of those in the industry the story of late has been that of Googles recent ‘pay-per-post’ campaign out in Japan, to promote Google in the Japanese marketplace. Unlike in much of the Western World, Google is not numero uno in Japan, instead that recognition goes to arch enemy Yahoo. However in their enthusiasm, Google appear to have tripped a rather important filter – which co-incidentally just happened to be one of their more contentious guidelines off recent years – that of paid links.

The furore centered around a ‘pay-per-post campaign’ with Cyberbuzz – A Tokyo based internet marketing company with many participants in the post referencing the Cyberpuzz campaigns. However again this is where Google failed to follow their own guidelines as not one of the links appears to contain the nofollow attribute highlighted by Google as best practise in these instances. A case of pot, calling the kettle black you may think…

Matt Cutts twitter post on Google.co.jp "penalty"

However it appears Google have penalised the Google.jp with a -4PR penalty, as announced by Matt Cutts (first highlighed by Hobo-Web and Patrick Altoft). Call me a cynic, but one can’t help thinking that this is somewhat suspect, and nothing more than a PR masterstroke on Googles perspective. After all, in real terms it is unlikely to have any significant knock on impact. Most people at the end of the day, do not Google Google, however it will have a number of knock-on effects:

• Significant Buzz – THere is already a lot of Google penalising themselves, and other posts similar to this one.
• Linkage – The amount of linkage generated on this subject is likely to be significant. Not really that much of an issue for Google, however as many SEO related sites tend to have high PR, something to consider all the same

Given the speed of response, there is little doubt Google have been carefully monitoring this. Certainly a quick look at Matt Cutts conversation history in Twitter (particularly those from February 9th ), show that the WebSpam team at Google would have been aware of the issue and the level of ‘interest’ it was provoking within the industry. I would thus suggest the powers that be at Google would have therefore been aware of the impending PR issues and this is merely a direct response to that rather than the traditional penalty system.

Google.co.jp "penalty" references on Twitter

Whether or not this is the type of noise the Japanese market want to hear is a different story – and to a certain extent whether this has even filtered through to the general public over there. Only time will tell on those.

However in my opinion is a brand reputation masterstroke.

In a year that has already seen significant growth for Twitter, things continue to go from strength to strength. Following on from making around $1 million during the Christmas break by alerting followers to sale items, Twitter has announced a range of Twitter-sclusive deals for its near 12000 following.

@Delloutlet on Twitter

As expected the announcement was made via Twitter as well as on via this Direct2Dell blog post:

Beginning today, Dell will offer deals from the Dell Outlet exclusive to Twitter in the U.S. With over 11,000 followers, our team wanted to show their thanks to the Twitter world through these new deals which will continue each week.

Its interesting to see the continuing evolvement of Twitter, it will be interesting to see how the continuing engagement with Twitter affects how other channels particularly email.  I single out email particularly because of the similarities – however the ‘invitation’ nature of twitter may mean take up of Twitter sales messages may be higher as a result, however at present I have seen very little evidence to support that.

However there are increasing numbers of intuitive and inventive tools and ‘plugins’ to Twitter, something which I feel is going to continue to see the potential monetization of Twitter move forward apace, particularly as I would suggest Twitter has four main benefits over other comparison channels:

• Users are warm prior to engagement. Primary readers are generally followers and thus highly receptive to any sales messages you may be distributing
• However responses may be read by secondary ‘followers’, and also be tertiary distribution points such as blog plugins and the like.
• Twitter is accountable (Yes I did say accountable). URL shorterners such as TinyURL allow you to pass tracking parameters which could be integrated back into your analytics.
• Twitter is permanent – well to a degree. Once posted the post cannot be deleted from the timeline by your recepients – unless they remove you – thus tone of voice and quantity are important (a bit like email)

Given the continuing uptake of Twitter by the mainstream public, perhaps the Dell example may be the first of many…

Over the course of the last couple of months, I have unfortunately become quite addicted to micro-blogging site Twitter. I am constantly suprised by Twitter, not just in terms of its uptake, but also in terms of its functionality and usability,  not just in a pure financial sense but also in terms of context.

Last night was just such a night. Whilst a lot of noise has been made of Twitter from a networking perspective, Twitter from a thought leadership perspective, it was last night that I saw Twitter as a citizen journalist tool. Its not the first time to be honest. When the plane recently went into the Hudson River, there was a post on Twitter within minutes of it happening.

Last night was similar. In the early hours of Friday morning (UK wise anyhow), a story started doing the rounds regarding Martin Schaedel (@martin), a well respected person within the Silicon Valley community had died in a plane crash in Santa Monica. People like @btabke (Brett Tabke) @Jenstar Jennifer Slegg)( and @DannySullivan (Danny Sullivan) posted a number of comments relating to the crash over the course of a three hour period or so, keeping many people in the loop as to proceedings. A live stream of condolenses has been building within Twitter, many from prominent internet and search marketing individuals.

Whilst in the grand scheme of things this was a fairly small incident, from a personal perspective it has opened my eyes as to the power of Twitter from this sort of perspective, particularly when you combine services such as Twitpic to the whole Twitter mix. All of the sudden you have a real-time, interactive overview of breaking news in some cases from a 1st person perspective. How many other communication channels can do that….

As the second part of the Twitter series here on Holistic, I thought I would suggest some of the people I am, and would recommend following on Twitter, and being a SEO in the UK, obviously all these are UK based.

Dave Naylor (DaveN)

Company: Bronco

WHO?: One of the ‘big dogs’ of UK search marketing, Dave started working in the SEO industry over 10 years ago.

WHY: Hugely popular, highly respected and well worth following

WHERE: http://twitter.com/DaveNaylor

Company: MediaVest/MVi

WHO?: Head of Search at MediaVest. Industry veteran (sorry Jon)

WHY: Widely respected and a regular speaker on both the SMX and SES speaking circuits. Amongst other things – he’s my boss.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/JonDMyers

Company: BigmouthMedia

WHO?: Head of Search at Bigmouthmedia.

WHY: Hardcore Search Marketeer – and ‘face’ of Bigmouthmedia (erm ). Passionate about all things search, and if that bores you, theres always his gaming.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/AndrewGirdwood

Company: Blogstorm/Branded3

WHO?: Director of Search at Branded3.

WHY: Been a magic year for Patrick and the Blogstorm blog.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/patrickaltoft

Company:

WHO?: Marketing Expert @ jimsmarketingblog.com

WHY: Hugely experienced marketeer and VERY well connected (Over 16000 followers on Twitter)

WHERE: http://twitter.com/Jimconnolly

Company: Altogether Digital

WHO?: SEO and Social Media Director at Altogether Digital

WHY: Entertaining blogger, and if that fails theres always the music commentary.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/ciaranj

Company: SEOptimise

WHO?: Director of Search at SEOptimise

WHY: Some great posts coming out of SEOptimise at the moment. Worth following for that alone.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/kevgibbo

Company: Microsoft/MSN

WHO?: Microsoft Adcentre’s Community Manager

WHY: Works for Microsoft apart from anything else (Who would turn down the chance of winning an ‘I’m a PC tshirt). Apart from that his regular commentary is hugely entertaining

WHERE: http://twitter.com/MelCarson

Company: Distilled

WHO?: Founder of Distilled with Duncan Morris

WHY: His involvement with SEOMoz is well known, however the site itself is a wealth of information.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/willcritchlow

Company: Ayima Search Marketing

WHO?: One of the Ayima Gang

WHY: Entertaining Blogger, and hugely entertaining twitter read not just in terms of latest on hangovers….

WHERE: http://twitter.com/evilgreenmonkey

Matt Sawyer – DataDial -Online Marketeer, SEO and Social Media Junkie – http://twitter.com/mattuk

Rob Watts – Latitude – SEO – Stephen Pavlovich – Bonytoad – http://twitter.com/bonytoad

Jane Copland – SEOMoz/Ayima – Only here as she isn’t 100% in the UK yet- http://twitter.com/coplandmj

Judith Lewis – I-Level – Search Director at I-Level – http://twitter.com/JudithLewis

Lisa Ditlefsen – Base One – Head of Search at BaseOne – http://twitter.com/LisaDitlefsen

George Hopkin – Johnston Press – SEO Evangelist – http://twitter.com/GeorgeHopkin

Paul Walsh – Various – http://twitter.com/PaulWalsh

Nikki Pilkington – http://twitter.com/nikkipilkington

Dave Davis – RedFly Marketing – http://twitter.com/daveredfly

Dan Alderson – Amaze PLC – http://twitter.com/pinje

and the final one

Peter Young

Company: MediaVest / Holistic Search

WHO?: SEO Manager at MediaVest.

WHY: Why not?

WHERE: http://twitter.com/peteyoung

Thats just some of my recommendations, Please feel free to add yours…

Twitter has been one of the tools I have been most into during 2008, something which has given me the opportunity to interact with some people I have only had a fleeting chance to meet during speaking engagements, industry events or attendance of conferences. This has included the likes of Kevin Ryan, Dave Naylor and various people from agencies such as Latitude  and BigMouthmedia.

For people not familiar with Twitter, Twitter is a microblogging service which allows a maximum of 140 characters, something which allows for a service which in my opinion ends up midway between an instant messsenger and a blog.

Twitter

There are a number of reasons however I may choose or not choose to connect with someone on Twitter – for example:

• No Introduction – Always nice to know a little about you before I choose to follow (or not as the case may be)
• No link to website – If your description doesn’t suffice, then a link is always good, so I can find out more about you.
• What you say – Probably one of the more important factors here. There are an awful lot of people who have over 18000 comments. No offence you either have
  1) Too much time
  2) Write a lot of rubbish. I am one of those that would rather have 500 interesting posts than 18000 telling me that you are in Puerto Banus or the like
  3) Swearing and the like. On personal level I am not one of those that wants to read a load of cussing when looking at Twitter. That combined with 2 is a definite nono.
• Kan jy Engels praat – In english – do you speak English. Unless your Dutch or Afrikaans there is not a good chance of me understanding you so in practical terms there is little or no point me following you.
• Have you written anything. I often receive a number of ‘follows’ from people with no comments. What is the point of me following you – if you don’t say anything?
• Are you a brand – Not a keen follower of brands unless I really like you (@starbucks for example)
• Frequency of tweets – One tweet every four months is not that interesting – unless its worth waiting for (and lets face it 140 characters really is difficult to write something knockout in – although I will stop short of impossible)
• Self Promotion – Shameless self promotion is a definite turn-off. People don’t use twitter for pure business purposes (if you want that LinkedIn or Ecademy is great for you. I tend to find people like to get to know you more ‘personally’ rather than your corporate persona.
• Are you in an industry I am interested in. For obvious reasons, SEO, Paid Search and other online marketing professionals are always an easy win – although Andy Murray (Tennis Player) and MCHammer (Remember him) have somehow made their way onto the list

If you are on Twitter, feel free to drop us a line – twitter.com/peteyoung, if you aren’t give it a try (and forget about your social life – at least without Twitter)

Twitter has become the new bloggers playground, with Andy Murray (Tennis Player) and even Obama twittering on a fairly regular basis (although I would suggest the Obama postings may become slightly less frequent ). However it has also become a commercial tool recently with brands like ComScore, Dell and even the likes of Oracle and IBM getting to grips with the Twitter phenomenon.

However, why do so many brands suck at Twitter?

Size

As many of us know, large organisations often have more defined rules and regulations than smaller organisations and individuals. This lack of flexibility often restricts brands from either

• Responding quickly to potential issues
• Corporate guidelines can sometimmes restrict the level/tone of response particularly in larger organisations
• Senior decision makes sometimes don’t have the familiarity with new technologies and can sometimes be wary of new technologies, and thus slow to adopt

Late to the show

As highlighted on the above point, larger organisations in particular are often slow to react to new technologies, and thus often can be beaten to the punch by competitors or just keen admirers. For example @disney is owned by Cherie Thomas from Los Gatos, California – https://twitter.com/Disney

Those that do adopt, come in two guises

1. Those that embrace, brands such as Dell and Comscore are perfect examples of this and…
2. Those that merely sit and do nothing, reserved with little or nothing to say, unsure on how to deal with the new guest to the party – such as Microsoft – twitter.com/microsoft

Intention

Lets face it, nearly all of us hate being preached to. Thats one of the beauties of the web. We invite who we want in, in particular search. Twitter is a very personal channel, if people don’t like you they will just stop following you – and thus your Twitter activity will go unnoticed. This lack of direct business return, can often restrict just what activity occurs – and for those that do go down the direct sales channel, can often end in disappointment unless done correctly (The Dell outlet example being a reasonably good example of this.

The Big Brother aspect

There are a number of brands out there following individuals, some as a direct response to previous follows (Starbucks for example returned in kind a follow for me), however others go out directly and follow indivuals in the hope of getting a follow recipricated. However there are a lot of Twitterers who do not like bing followed by corporate followers, and thus such tactics can fall on deaf ears.

Lack of familiarity with brands

With some brands such as IBM and Oracle, individuals have created so called hybrid profiles, such as RichardATDell. Whilst Dell do actually have a brand persona, there are a number of brands out there where hybrid accounts operate, and where these operate without brand compliment, can potentially mean a disassociation with the brand.

The other potential issue can be job migration. People don’t stay in jobs forever and these hybrid accounts can often become obselete very quickly – OracleJulio being one such example.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound

With big brands it is likely that people will naturally search for that brand, however this isn’t often the case with smaller brands. For this reason, active commercial use of Twitter in these instances can merely result in lots of effort with little or no return.

Lack of buy-in

Whilst brand monitoring is become more popular by the day, there is still a long way to go. Many brands do not follow what is being said about them online, even by simple devices such as Google Alerts. Without knowing what is being said, it is unlikely some brands will have a justifiable reason to operate in the Blogosphere, let alone Twitter.

There is no doubt the effect Twitter has had within search circles, one only has to look at the people using it (most of the UK and US search welebrity circuit (term coined from Ciaran Norris) are on there including Matt Cutts, Jill Whalen, Jason Calacanis, Danny Sullivan, Lee Odden, Will Critchlow and Richard Scoble,

As an individual, are you on Twitter – if not, why not?

If you are a brand – what are you doing on Twitter. Its not for everyone, however if you are going to enter the brave new world, take your time, do your homework and enter it with your eyes wide open