Author: JB

Categories
Twitter News

5 Corporate Brands With 1 Million Or More Followers On Twitter

1million_Twitter_Dollar Is @aplusk Ashton Kutcher smiling now that major corporations are eating his dust when it comes to followers on Twitter? Now that his twitter account is about to make it to the 4 million mark of followers more and more corporations are finally surpassing this million follower milestone. This just recently happened to Dell’s @DellOutlet twitter account and there was no real fan fare on their part.

Lionel Menchaca Dell’s Chief Blogger just wrote that the million follower mark just kinda snuck up on them. He further writes that they are happy to be in the company of other brands like @Google, @WholeFoods, @Zappos, and @JetBlue

We here at @Twarketing have been tracking these corporate brands using site like Twitterholic and Twittercounter and we have come to one conclusion.  This million follower mark is just the beginning. If you look at the corporate brands that are not major celebrities, sport figures, news agencies, popular online publications and of course Twitter themselves the top 10 would round out like this:

[table id=1 /]
Let me know your thoughts on how your brand is doing on Twitter.

All the best

JB

Categories
Biz Stone Twitter

Biz Stone & Tavis Smiley Talk About How Twitter Will Make Money

Biz_Tavis

This was an interesting conversation between Christopher (Biz) Stone (@biz) and PBS Show host  Tavis Smiley (@tavissmiley).  I have been saying all along that Twitter should not concentrate on the advertising dollars but on the companies and corporations who are making money on Twitter.  Corporations like Dell, BestBuy, Jetblue and Zappos have made millions from their F_R_E_E Twitter accounts. 3 Million Dollars, Dell And A PayPal “Donate” Button I for one would not mind paying for a premium account from Twitter, especially if you gave me a way to organize the people who followed me and gave me Google like analytics as well. I still think Twitter should also consider making money on  major events like the NFL’s Super Bowl,  the PGA’s Masters and major elections. Twitter’s New Election 2008: Twitter Branding At It’s Best As Twitter grows it will have ample opportunity to make money, I just hope to be a part of that money making process when it happens.

See or listen to the full interview by clicking here.

All the best

JB

Categories
Fortune 500

Should Fortune 500 CEO’s Have Their Own Presence On Twitter?

Should CEO’s Have Their Own Presence on Twitter. What are you thoughts?

Categories
Fortune 500 Twarketing Twitter News

3 Million Dollars, Dell And A PayPal “Donate” Button

Twitter_logo_donateHow many of you would donate money to the founders of Twitter if they put a simple “PayPal Donate” button on your Twitter profile page? I just read an article by Claire Cain Miller @clairecm of the New York Times “Bits Blog” that stated how Dell has made over 3 million dollars from its “Free” Twitter account. I am sure if you took into consideration the referral and repeat business stemming from this Twitter traffic, that 3 million is probably more like 5 million.

Here is my theory. What if Dell made a donation of say 50 cents per follower that directly purchased an item from a Twitter link? @DellOutlet on Twitter currently has 758,311 followers. Lets just take 10% of those followers or 75k and multiply that by the 50 cents.  Ok that figure comes out to be about $37,500.  CBS charged a record $2.6 million for a 30-second spot during Super Bowl XLI. That’s roughly $87,000 per second. Do you think Dell would have made the same type of ROI it did with Twitter if it had purchased a 2.6 million dollar Super Bowl ad?

Don’t get me wrong I know Twitter is not lacking in venture capital to keep its doors open but I also don’t mind paying for a service that can bring me the type of Return on Investment that Twitter has freely given to major corporations like Dell, @Starbucks, @JetBlue and @Whole Foods just to name a few.

So here is my suggestion to Twitter.  Create a simple “PayPal  Donate” button and place it on your “How do you make money from Twitter?” page that is located in the “About us” section of the Twitter website.  If you choose not to profit yourselves from the donations, may I suggest a few charities that would be more than willing to take the much needed funds of your hands.

Twitter_make_money_donate

Juvenile_Justice_Fund

Juvenile Justice Fund

Johns_Hopkins_Medicine

Johns Hopkins University  to support pancreas cancer research

So I ask you again, would you mind if Twitter placed a “Donate” button on your Twitter account profile ? How much is your Twitter account worth to you these days? Please share what your Twitter account is worth and also share if given the chance how much would you donate to keep your Twitter account?

All the best

JB


CBS is looking to charge a record $2.6 million for a 30-second spot during this year’s Super Bowl XL

Categories
Case Studies Twarketing Twitter News Twitterholics

KFC And Oprah Make A Mess Out Of Free Grilled Chicken

gc_kfcIf you don’t know by now the KFC (@kfc_colonel) Free Chicken Meal offer from Oprah (@oprah) is now over.  KFC pulled the offer and is now having the President of KFC apologize to America through a youtube video.  Both Oprah and KFC should have realized that this type of promotion had the makings of disaster. I was one of the lucky ones to actually redeem my coupon but I could not get the grilled chicken or my choice of sides as advertised on the coupon. I had to settle for a substitution of the original recipe and coleslaw with mashed potatoes. I was not mad at them for the substitution and I really appreciated them still honoring the coupon even though they had run out of the grilled chicken. But I was one of the lucky ones because now there is only a “Rain Check” waiting for anyone willing to bring their Oprah/KFC coupon into a KFC location.  Check out the details below.

rain_check_kfc

One good learning experience that came out of this mess for both KFC and Oprah was the marketing impact this offer had on both their brands. This will be an obvious case study on what not to do with a free meal offer.

The Twitter impact was also both good and bad. KFC and Oprah were both top trends for the past few days almost bringing the Twitter platform to a halt. This serge of traffic pushed Oprah’s followers over 900k but only increased KFC to just over 2k.

I in turn got a Tweet from KFC to my @jbrath twitter account saying they would make good on me not getting to sample the Kentucky Grilled Chicken with my free coupon.  They kfc_tweet2instructed me to send them a DM and they would take care of me.  So KFC its on you to redeem yourself to me and all those millions of people who were turned away empty handed with no grilled chicken on behalf of Oprah.

I will update this blog post with the KFC answer to my DM.

Let me know your thoughts

JB