Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Twitter chance to get better in B2B

I am tweeting since a while and as a marketer I like to tweet. Tweeting is cool. But I did not yet really offer tweeting as a sales tool. This keeps me thinking. I know twitter is working on monetizing tweets, but if they would rethink their banner idea with something more simple but very effective.

I understand twitter was once created that you can send via SMS messages to your twitter account, but who is using this function? People who tweet have usually a smart phone and use a twitterrific or other twitter software.

As a person I like the idea that when I tweet all my followers can read all my tweets, but as a company I would like that not all tweets are reaching all followers.
A lot of my customers are using right now SMS service to send customizes short messages to their subscribers which are offering from coupons to samples almost everything. It is even a perfect geo targeting tool.

The problem is that the costs are pretty high, either having an SMS server or using a 3
rd party for this.

More and more phones are now twitter ready, means have build in twitter that user can get tweets as push notification without running a twitter application. Even apple will earlier than later include twitter in their mobile OS as standard.

Here is the idea

Twitter could offer businesses to open a business tweet account which allows tweeting to certain regions or followers with customized messages. I rather would prefer to pay for this service than using old fashion SMS advertising. Twitter could extend their  tweets with photos and video (without the need to use Twitcam, Virl, Twit C, Twitpic or any other of the 20 different image twit websites).

Would it not be cool to have an account and decide which tweet which person, group or region can read. Making this as a B2B model at twitter could be a very lucrative business model.
Maybe this does already exist, but if so I have problems to find documentation on it.
The next level would be for twitter to make deals with Panasonic, Sony, Philips etc to allow their internet enabled TVs and Cameras to show certain tweet users are following on the screen of TV or Camera.

Imagine you take pictures and suddenly you see a tweet that Nestle has a special offer just around the corner you took the image. Pretty sure it will come. Some cameras have already GPS or Wifi (like the Panasonic DMC-TZ05S camera http://www.buy.com/prod/panasonic-dmc-tz50s-lumix-9-megapixel-wifi-digital-camera-with-28mm/q/loc/33409/207960134.html )

View into the near future

Twitter will open customized targeted tweet. Company X opens a tweet, collect 100 of thousand followers. Company X does not need to know the name of the followers only where they are, what their interests are. But how does Company X know their interests? First they are following X, so they are somehow interested in their products; second X is looking at the twitter statistic (Omniture listen to me, another good way to make some business) which of the followers is following active the tweets, who is clicking on links in the tweets. X collects all this data for 3 to 5 months, and then starts targeted tweets. Or of X does not want to wait so long, X will send tweet with survey link to find out interests.

With this info, Company X tweets that right now their latest commercial is running on channel 13, but only followers who have twitter on their TV will see it. X tweets that that they have a photo contest in Paris, but only people who use twitter on their phone or camera in France will be able to read this tweet.

X tweets that there is a discount at the grocery store around the corner, but only people who are close to the grocery with twitter on their phone will be able to read it. The limit is the sky.
Would I as an advertiser pay for getting these features, oh yes.

Dear Twitter company, please think about enabling these features (if you need help with ideas let me know) and don’t focus too much on normal banner ads. Websites are not your competition, SMS brokers, SMS marketing companies are!!!


OR dear twitter company, wait 5 years then all cell phones are only ip devices. All calls are going over the internet and SMS or MMS did disappear. ATT and Verizon are still there but selling only 3G, 4G or 5G contracts no voice contracts. Then you twitter will anyway control the market. Consumers don’t like always and in any situation complex banners, sometimes they just want poor info advertising.

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