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.

Juvenile Justice Fund

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

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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 instructed 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

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I think I was most disappointed in Avon not having an official Twitter presence since they are one of the most popular consumer brands with millions of women customers.  I think Twitter would be an amazing asset for a company like Avon. Especially as a customers support tool for its legions of independent sales reps. Twitter could also be a great lead generator for Avon’s  sales force.  I just did a twitter search of “Avon Makeup” and came up with hundreds of conversation all commenting on Avon products.

Of the 5 companies that have a twitter presence, Yahoo of course has the most followers with just over 10,000. Then it drops down to PepsiCo with just over 1500 and then it takes a dramatic drop with Xerox at just over 500, DuPont with 125, and Western Union with just 25.

Maybe these ladies should take a lesson from Oprah who currently has close to 500k followers at this time and will have a million by the end next month.  Oprah just got on Twitter a few days ago but I can bet you she has big plans on how she will capitalize on her use of this new communication service.

Pat Woertz – Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) – No. 27

Angela Braly – Wellpoint (WLP) – No. 32

Lynn Elsenhans – Sunoco (SUN) – N0. 41

Indra Nooyi – PepsiCo (PEP) – No. 52  http://twitter.com/pepsico

Irene Rosenfeld – Kraft Foods (KFT) – No. 53

Ellen Kullman – DuPont (DD) – No. 75   http://twitter.com/DuPont_News

Mary Sammons – Rite Aid (RAD) – No. 100

Carol Meyrowitz – TJX (TJX) – No. 131

Anne Mulcahy – Xerox (XRX) – No. 147   http://twitter.com/XeroxEvents

Brenda Barnes – Sara Lee (SLE) – No. 199

Andrea Jung – Avon Products (AVP) – No. 255

Laura Sen – BJ’s Wholesale Club (BJ) – No. 269

Susan Ivey – Reynolds American (RAI) – No. 294

Carol Bartz – Yahoo (YHOO) – No. 345   http://twitter.com/yahoo

Christina Gold – Western Union (WU) – No. 451   http://twitter.com/WesternUnion

So ladies I am officially calling all of you out when it comes to your non Twitter presence.  Lets not let all the celebrities, entertainers and sports figures grab all the glory on Twitter.  Madam CEOs you may now Tweet, Follow or just get out of the way.

All the best

JB
@twarketing

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If you missed Ashton Kutcher Live early this morning  you missed history when Mr. Punked himself went over the 1,000,000 mark of followers on twitter.

All I can say is that I knew this would happen eventually but I would not have thought it would be Ashton of all people. I was rooting  for Obama…;-)

But Ashton and CNN went at it toe-to-toe and Ashton prevailed.

Here is the Tweet he sent out when he hit the 1 Million mark.

This is the first milestone but it won’t be the last for Twitter. I predict someone will get to the 2,3,4 and 5 million mark before the end of this year. So hold onto your hat Twitter Universe we are in for a bumpy ride…;-)

Holla

Jazzy

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The mantra of this blog is Tweet, Follow or Get OUT of the Way and this holds true to all the users and haters of Twitter. Evan mentions in his Ted speech that Twitter was a side project started on a hunch. This blog is a side project started on a hunch that Twitter will grow so much and be such a big part of the mainstream marketing industry, Twarketing results on Google would be in the billions. These Results 1 – 10 of about 1,020 for twarketing are growing quite well as of the date of this post.

So Evan, keep those hunches coming and maybe one day I can buy you lunch in LA from OMG WTF BBQ!!!!1eleven @omgwtfkogibbq
and you can buy me some gas #atlgas here in GA

Holla..;-)

JB

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Let me know your thoughts

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Twitter Address: @quickenloans

Subject: America’s #1 Online Lender, Quicken Loans

Marketing Challenge: Distinguish their brand name shared by major bookkeeping software manufacturer and continue to bolster their lead in the online mortgage business.

Favorite Follows: @zappos and @feedbackcentral

Check out the Podcast:

Download Twarketing Podcast #2 Quicken Loans (6) – 25.59 MB

When you think of Quicken, most immediately think of the best selling bookkeeping software by Intuit.  When I did the research for my blog post Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For I mistakenly assumed that Quicken Loans was a part of Intuit. I was then notified by Kelly LaVaute, Senior Copywriter and manage all of their social media that Quicken Loans was a totally separate company from Intuit.  The story of how Quicken Loans became the number one online mortgage broker is quite a marvel especially with how much of a crisis the mortgage industry is in right now.

Matt Cardwell, the Director of Web Marketing (@thefitnessnerd) made mention that the company was bought back from Intuit  by Dan Gilbert the original founded in July 2002. Gilbert led a small group of investors in purchasing the company back from Intuit, retaining the Quicken Loans name in perpetuity. The company has been privately held since that time.

Customer Service
Quicken Loans prides itself on customer service and has used Twitter as an intricate part of how to communicate with their prospects and customers. Kelly@ Quicken Loans @quickenloans can answer a wide variety of questions regarding mortgages as well as a great fish and chip place to eat in Detroit.  Here are a few of her most recent Tweets.

Customer Feedback
Qwicken Loans just recently lunched another Twitter account specifically to get user and customer feedback. Cora @feedbackcentral is in charge of organizing live user feedback sessions. Users can share their feedback and get to see results of their suggestions on the quickenloansfeedbackcentral.com site and on Twitter. Check out some of the Tweets from @feedbackcentral

Education
Quicken Loans is very conscious of the current state of the economy and looks to help in educating their customers on how to prepare themselves for managing a mortgage. They have setup the Quizzle.com website and @quizzle in order to assist the home buyer and seller with an array of financial tools. These tools include a home value report, a mortgage evaluator, a budgeting tool and a free credit report.

Customer Satisfaction
Quicken Loans has also created a Youtube Channel to capture the unscripted videos of their many satisfied customer experiences with Quicken Loans. Here is one of my favorites.

Bottom Line
Quicken Loans has truly embraced social media and gained a real presence on Twitter. Both Kelly and Matt agree that the key to being successful in communicating through these new forms of social marketing is having the support of their company when uncharted issues-both good and bad-arise.  In fact, this Quicken Loans team charged with innovatively building customer relationships is in the unique, empowered position to use social media to with little interference from its legal department. Kelly, Matt, Cora and the rest of the Quicken Loans social media crew are entrusted to be the voice of the company, working in tandem with one common company goal: “Making sure with every client, every time, they deliver on the promise to make it the best mortgage experience ever”.

Places to find Quicken Loans

1.       Quicken Loans on Twitter

2.       Quicken Loans on Facebook

3.       Quicken Loans on Yahoo! Answers

4.       Quicken Loans on YouTube

5.       Quicken Loans on MySpace

6.       Quicken Loans on Flickr

7.       Quicken Loans on Zillow

8.       Quicken Loans on LinkedIn

Quicken Loans also operates the following blogs:

1.       Quicken Loans What’s The DIFF? blog

2.       Quicken Loans Insider

3.       Quicken Loans Community DIFF

Quizzle has its own personality via the following:

1.       Quizzle on Twitter

2.       Quizzle on Yahoo! Answers

3.       Quizzle on Facebook

4.       Quizzle blog

Twitterholic Stats:

Kelly @ QuickenLoans is ranked 18,845th on twitterholic! (by followers)

Kelly @ QuickenLoans is ranked 26th in their location on twitterholic! (by followers in ‘Detroit, MI‘)

TweetStats:

Kelly@quickenloans top five words from their TweetCloud: mortgage, rates, fixed, rate, 30yr.

Here are the people Kelly@quickenloans Replies to the most. @jenwebmkt, @kauf, @rrcarter, @amurphy and @feedbackcentral are part of her top 5.

Kelly@quickenloans gets a grade of  99.8 from Twitter Grader

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Twitter Address: @colderice

Subject: Ebay Platinum Power Seller John Lawson

Marketing Challenge: Market and promote new Social Media Blog ColderICE (Internet Commerce Education)

I met John Lawson about 5 years ago at a SCORE Atlanta conference. Back then John was steadily building his successful eBay business.  John is now a Platinum eBay Seller but he still longed for something more.  ColderICE was an idea that John shared with me while taping some interviews at his home last year.  The ColderICE idea has now become a concept and is fast becoming a full blown reality with the help of Twitter.

John or ColderICE (@colderice) has gone from a handful of followers to 1500+ in less than 6 months. He has also become a Twonster when it comes to tweeting about  his ColderICE concept.  The ColderICE concept is all about Internet Commerce Education. It started with commerce via eBay and has evolved to all aspects of marketing, selling products and services on the Internet.  John is also the host of the ColderICE podcast on his blog Colderice.com where he interviews some of the best in the business of when it comes to doing commerce on the Internet.

This was a fun first show with my good friend John Lawson.  John shares some great tips on what he does on a daily basis to promote his blog ColderICE.  John stresses that no one wants to be marketed too all day all the time.  John uses Twitter to make a difference in someones life by sharing quality content.  Creating a Buzz on Twitter is the key for those who want to be successful influencers.  John also shares his opinion on why creating value on twitter is not enough. The more you give the more you get back in life as well as on Twitter.  So please take a listen to our short conversation and give me your thoughts on how our first show made out.

Download Twarketing Podcast #1 ColderICE (63) -

Twitterholic Stats:

Joined Twitter on: 2008-04-26 00:07:50

John is ranked 4,424th on twitterholic! (by followers)

John is ranked 42nd in their location on twitterholic! (by followers in ‘Atlanta, Georgia‘)

TweetStats:

John’s Top 3 Twitter apps are: Twhirl, TweetDeck and everyone’s favorite. The Web John also enjoys using TwitterBerry for his mobile Tweets.

Here are the people John Replies to the most.  @andotherstuff, @rksmythe, @Scott_Pooler, @aswas and @brentleary are part of his top 5.

This is John’s ReTweetability Index.The ReTweetability Index measures and ranks Twitter users based on the infectious power of their tweets. This number accounts for number of followers and Tweets overall, so it is a true indicator of infectiousness.

John gets a grade of  99.8 from Twitter Grader

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