BLOG: Tamara's Tech Marketing Tips
August 30, 2010
I was listening to a very good Beancast episode last night discussing whether or not companies should follow back on Twitter. The guests raised some good points about why people follow brands, primarily for coupons and product information–not engagement. The guests also suggested that companies can monitor their brand an engage when needed through Twitter sear h or Tweetdeck. And, that interation may be more likely to come from a brand evangelist or community manager than the corporate Twitter account.
All I could think while listening to these arguments was — who cares? What is so hard about following back? No one is suggesting a brand read all the tweets of those they are following. In fact, do you know any individuals who are? Just follow back. If someone cared enough to follow your brand, the least you can do is follow back (note: I am not saying this applies to individuals, just corporate accounts.) I find it a huge turnoff to go to a brands’ page and see they are only following a handful of people.
Think of it this way, following back is like having a mini-focus group constantly going on. If you want insight into what is interesting, important, and exciting to your fans, just tune into the stream for a while. You may learn more than you think.
May 28, 2010
After spending three years on Twitter, sometimes I can still be surprised by clients and prospects that still struggle to understand how to use Twitter for their business. Then I remember that I’m living in the fishbowl. While what I do goes way beyond helping a client get onto Twitter, I put together the following tutorial to help clients learn the basics. This includes answering questions like what is a RT? What about a hashtag? How do I find people to follow? How do I get people to follow me? What are the best tools to use? Hopefully it even provides some food for thought on the bigger question — how to figure out what you should be doing on Twitter.
March 10, 2010
There is a lot of excitement about location this year, no doubt about it. Between the growing number of location-based services in mobile apps, geo-targeting in advertising, and services like Foursquare and Gowalla– telling people where you are is the thing to do. But the recent hubbub over PleaseRobMe.com also gets you thinking about how much you want to reveal.
Personally, I don’t mind checking into Foursquare because that doesn’t necessarily mean my house is empty, and I don’t often make my home address public. (yes, I’m sure some of you could find it if you really wanted to) That is why the announcement that Twitter is turning on location made me start to think — what does this mean for those of us that work from home?
If I tweet from home, will that provide easy access to my personal information? Since the service has since been turned off, I guess I’ll have to wait a few more days to find out. I’m assuming that adding your location to a tweet will be an option, as it is through other services using the API, rather than the default. But, something to think about and be aware of as you are tweeting from home. And I won’t even get into the ramifications of tweeting from places you aren’t supposed to be 
