The Future of Business

How Not to Use Twitter

In my previous post I gave you an example how to be a Twitter spammer and assemble a useless and unresponsive community that does not care about you. In this post I am going to give you some ideas on using Twitter to do some serious damage to your brand.

I like a certain company's products a lot. They are not some big guys, they make just a few products, but those products work and I depend on them every day. Hundreds of thousands of people depend on them all over the world. They have recently launched a great new product combined with a service that will take off like wildfire in its market. It is that good. Unfortunately, they have no idea how to market themselves on Twitter. As far as I know they have only two employees on Twitter, both responsible for the company's relations with the outside world. A week of following those guys taught me that they have two too many.

Person no. 1, a Community Liaison hasn't replied to my tweets for a week, which itself is not necessarily going to turn me off. Tweets get lost. No big deal. What is a big deal is the fact that there have been zero updates for a week. Think about it. If you had a cool new product or service and an opportunity to reach a lot of important people on Twitter, wouldn't you want the world to notice? And I'm not talking about spamming, but legitimate non-pushy activities like soliciting user stories by giving some incentive for those who reply with particularly interesting stories?

Person no. 2, Chief Evangelist, is tweeting like a mad bunny about everything but her company or their new products. She's let me know about her ears getting sweaty at a party, and other bodily problems due to her travels and partying, but I learned nothing about the company she's working for or their product. Not a single Tweet mentioned either. If you are on Twitter and put your job title and the name of the company you work for in your profile, then people will follow you to learn more about your company, not yourself. People are interested in what you are evangelizing, not you personally or the things about your body that make you feel uncomfortable.

Based on those two cases, I recommend the following strategy to damage your brand on Twitter:

• Put your marketing team on Twitter.
• Tell them to list the name of your company and their job titles in their profiles.
• Make sure they all include your company website's URL in their profiles.
• Tell them to follow these two strategies, for Customer Support and Community Liaisons personnel: ignore everybody, especially their @ tweets and direct messages; for Chief Evangelists: post nothing at all, or post every 5 seconds about your sweaty palms, waxy ears, stuffed nose, or tight underwear, but never, ever mention the name of your company, products, or services.

As always, you can follow my advice, but don't blame me when you loose money, market share, or the last shred of credibility in your community for doing what I tell you.

More Freelance Design Ideas for 2009

Following my previous post, here are a few additional ideas for freelance designers, aka. the stuff I need and other might need it too.

• Templates for video podcasts. Logos, transition, lower thirds graphics, overlays, etc. Producers want their videos to look good. Have a look at TWiT Live, Mevio, or Revision 3 for ideas. Have a look at Videocue, Wirecast, Visual Communicator, or Vlog it! for inspiration.
• Themes for Pligg. Anyone can start a site like digg. Help them make it look good. 
• Templates for printable CD/DVDs. As I recently discovered, I lack the talent and the time required to design labels for my CD/DVD kits. Design something unique and you may have me as a customer. You can sell it on istockphoto, or stockexpert. These sites are not for photos only. They accept videos and vector images. Have a look at CD printing/design software like CD Jaquet, Disc Cover, DiscLabel, Discus.
• Icon sets for websites in sync with templates. I really need this. I know it is a huge effort to design a professionally looking template, but it would be a great idea to be able to buy supplementary icon sets. You can sell them on istockphoto, or stockexpert.
• Templates for eBooks! (for laptops, desktops, smartphones, iPod Touch/iPhone). I do an on-line seminar for authors and publishers interested in this new medium. I also wrote a book on the subject, which will be published in January. Subscribe to my book mailing list to be notified when it ships.
• Templates for Mailing Lists. I use AWeber to manage my mailing lists. While I don't like HTML mail, some people like it and there is reliable research that shows that HTML mail has a higher conversion rate than plain text mail. Consider selling HTML and plain test email template designs.

You Too Can Game the System on Twitter: A Stupid Marketer's Guide

I promised you that I would save you money and I am going to keep my word. Here is how to save money by not giving it to Twitter marketers, Twitter community organizers, and anybody with the word Twitter in their job title. Read this post carefully, it is not what it seems to be.

Twitter is quickly becoming a new avenue for marketers who are interested in spreading the word about their own or their sponsor's products and/or services. They've heard that the best thing that could happen to them is to have a lot of followers, but follow only a few Twitter users, which seems to be one of the new measures of 'authority. And, as the "Twitter consultant's" thinking goes, those with a lot of authority attract even more followers eager to read buy whatever crap they want to push. But there is a tiny problem, there is no easy way to get those huge numbers of followers. How do you do it? How do you get those oodles of followers? You hire a "Twitter consultant," buy books, courses, (i.e. spend, spend, spend...) and maybe get a few hundred followers.

Or, you take a shortcut that works just as well, if not better. I'm going to give it to you for free. Here's how you get a ton of followers on Twitter without trying.

Find someone who has a lot of followers and follow the people they are following. There is a limit of 2000 users you can follow when you only have a few followers, but that's not a problem. Follow those 2000 users (you can do it in a day) and you will soon be getting followed by hundreds of users who will reciprocate.

If you are lucky, you can squeeze out approx. 700 followers out of a well chosen group of 2000 users followed by you. But that doesn't have to end there. Wait a couple of weeks and unfollow everyone. You will be able to follow another 2000 people and maybe extract another 700 followers out of that new group. Repeat the process several times and you too can end up with thousands of followers while you are following none. To those who don't know how you've done it, your following/followers ratio will smell of really high authority.

Except, you'll have no authority at all. Your community of followers will not really be worth much. You will know nothing about your followers and they will not care much about you. Most of them will be trying to game the system and squeeze out some commissions. A lot of them will be bots. You will be reaching thousands of users, yet selling to no one. Why? Because true authority, respect, and attention has to be earned. You have to have something interesting to say, what you are pointing people to must be of interest to them. You should get out of the picture altogether and become a middle-man between your followers and something that has value to them. Only then you will be able to grow and monetize your community. And guess what? It takes time and effort. Just like anything else. There are no shortcuts, but the networks that grow organically are made of true fans. You want true fans. You really do. Just ask Mick Jagger.

10 Ideas for Freelance Designers

Everybody's doing these lists of 3, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 1000 things you should be doing in 2009, so why not do my own? Here are my 10 (very subjective, because I need this stuff) ideas for designers looking for new sources of income:

1. Templates for Wordpress and Joomla. Boring? Yes! Great potential? Yes! The place is getting crowded, but still has a lot of potential. Where do you sell them? Lots of places, like ThemeForest.
2. Templates for Drupal and Moodle. Please, please, please. We need high quality templates for Drupal and Moodle.
3. Twitter backgrounds. Everybody needs one. Myself included... 
4. Ustream.TV / Mogulus / Stickam.tv channel page design. Both on the main server and on the client's site. Graphics, layout, etc.
5. Ustream.TV  / Mogulus / Stickam.tv video graphics. Titles, backgrounds, icons, animations, the whole branding package. Help the independent media producers look their best.
6. Videocue and Wirecast video graphics and animation. Same as point 5, but for the Videocue and Wirecast.
7. Drupal podcasting module. Will someone write a PodPress replacement? Please... 
8. Drupal and Moodle itagg and Zong modules and widgets. The fathers of Web 2.0 have recently proclaimed and e-commerce is back. Help publishers, bloggers, and content producers monetize their content.
9. Royalty-free music for podcasts. The current offering is boring. Make some music themes and sell on Shockwave-Sound.
10. Royalty-free sound effects. You can never have too many sound effects.

There you have it. Have a prosperous 2009!