Twitter is a 140 character micro-blogging platform that has so far generated over 1.41 billion (that’s billion with a b) messages between users.  Those message run the gammut from insightful to inane, from brand bashing to content sharing, from personal to events of worldwide importance.  Politicians have, and in some cases still do, used twitter to get their message out, to inform followers of rallies, or of important news.  News organizations use twitter to push their stories, and companies use it for branding and customer support.

There have been some celebrities that use twitter to connect with their fans, people such as Monty Python’s  John Cleese, Lance Armstrong, Richard Branson, Penn Jillette, Scottish tennis star Andy Murray, Kazaam star… ok basketball player Shaquille O’Neal,  Star Trek’s Brent Spiner & Wil Wheaton,  Dave Matthews, and even MC Hammer.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve noticed more and more British celebrities signing up and tweeting. People such as the venture capitalists from BBC America’s Dragons Den: Duncan Bannatyne, Deborah Meaden, Peter Jones, and Theo Paphitis, UK television presenters Philip Schofield & Judy Finnigan, and former Youg Ones, Rik Mayall & Adrian Edmondson.

Is this a sign that Twitter is starting to catch on?  Will the celebrities pull their fans onto the service to hear what they have to say?  I‘d have to say…yes.

I’ve noticed that whenever television presenter Jonathan Ross has been talked about in the press or on the radio (Sirius plays BBC radio on a 5 hour delay in the US), his Twitter account has frequently been mentioned as a source for the piece.  In the 54 days that Jonathan Ross has had a Twitter account, he’s accumulated almost 14,000 followers, with quite a few of those being new users (from an unscientific study of the last 60 or so people that followed him).   British actor, comedian, & author Stephen Fry has over 50,000 followers (myself included) and has done interviews evangelizing for Twitter.

Twitter has had some phenomenal growth in users (the last number I saw was 2,000 new users per day), and with these celebrities pushing Twitter out into the limelight, that growth can only continue.  So, the questions are:

• Are you active on Twitter?
• Does your brand have a presence?
• Have you at least reserved your brand name on Twitter?

If not, why not?

Update:

Sadly it looks as though either the celebrities have gone from Twitter, or as some suggest in the comments there were some fake accounts as  1 week after this was published all of the dragons, and both of the Young ones were gone…

Times are tough.  To say that the economy is bad is an understatement.  So, in absence of actually trying to do a good job,  here are seven ways to create job security for you and your marketing team in 2009 using the tried and true method of smoke and mirrors.

1.  Traditional media is dead.   Says who?
You can’t improve what you can’t measure.  Measuring the success of traditional media buys like print, TV, or radio spots is difficult.  Perfect!!  You have done your job by running the campaigns.  Now, it is the sales department’s responsibility.  If no sales come from those campaigns, clearly it is not your department’s fault.

2.  2009 Media Plan = Unwavering
Sure, lots of time was spent in 2008 determining what was working and what was not, and shifting your spend to focus on the most effective campaigns.  But…let’s face it, that was exhausting.  You know that media plan you created at the end of last year for 2009?… commit and stick to your guns. 

You have done the marketing research that you were expected to do and that everyone has approved.  How much could the landscape really change during 2009?  And, if there are problems, hey, they approved the plan.

3.  Google – Are you being evil?
We all know that historically pay-per-click has been one of the most cost-efficient ways of marketing.  But, it is 2009 now.  Think of all of the challenges…click fraud, rising keyword costs, increased competition.  It is certainly the search engines fault now if your campaigns are not successful.

4.  Very, very important – Make enemies with IT
It is MUCH easier to blame the enemy. If executives want to hold you accountable for ROI, data, or analytics stand tall and point the finger at your enemies in IT.  You would have certainly had the proof to show how successful your campaigns were if only IT had helped you out.

5.  ROI – So very 2008
Explain to your executives that ROI is an overused, overrated metric.  Just because you can track things, doesn’t mean you should.  There are many more important metrics (see #6).

6. 2009 – Choose your metrics wisely
There are so many metrics available to you these days, and plenty that most executives will have no idea what they mean (read…cannot question whether good or bad, successful or not).  Hits, bring them back….meaningless minutia with an explanation laden with technical jargon, PERFECT!! 

Geography, another good one… usually pretty inaccurate but everyone enjoys this stat as they can mentally try to figure out who they know that may be causing this traffic.  Mobile Devices….okay you and I know it probably accounts for less than 3% of the traffic, but isn’t it cool that people are looking at our site on their iPhone.  We are so cutting edge!

7.  Analytics – Wait, why bother?
You did not get into the interesting, creative field of marketing to be tied to spreadsheets, come on.  And besides, who really cares about the numbers.  If executives ask for reports or numbers, explain to them that they are not asking for Web design ideas from the accounting department…so, why is there this double standard?

I hope this list has been helpful.  These are just the top ideas that came to mind.  Feel free to let me know if there are more that I have missed.

Good luck in 2009!

So, you’ve decided to create a video game.  What do you do now?  How do you get started?

The decisions you make here can make or break your game.  At the same time –  this is a process.  If you treat it like an experiment (which it is), you’ll be able to make changes as development goes along and seek the best possible game/user experience rather than succumbing to other, perhaps monetary, factors.

Don’t get me wrong.  You should never throw money at a problem.  You just end up with money out of your hand and all over the floor.  But, you should also never decide to use an element/ingredient just because it costs a lot of money.  If the gargantuan-ly expensive element detracts from user experience and thereby the game overall, it will discourage users from the game and your product/service.  You’ll lose more money keeping it in than if you dropped it in the first place.

At the end of this grand experiment, you’ll either have invented the light bulb or learned something almost more important: how a light bulb doesn’t work.  Here are just a few of the decisions you’ll need to make on your journey towards play-marketing (as I like to call it):

1. Audience.  Just because you have a large audience for your product/service doesn’t mean you need to include all of them.  Just because you have a small audience for your product doesn’t mean you need to limit the game to their demographic.  Choose an audience that you want to target and build the game around them.  “Everyone” is not an option.  It’ll be much easier if you’re more specific, but you don’t need to say “women between 30 and 35 with cats named Stella.”  Hey, if that’s your audience great, but something too specific may be limiting to your creative process.

Once you’ve chosen your audience, learn about them.  Find out what they like and dislike and how you can better make a game that they will enjoy.  A gothic horror game probably wouldn’t go over well with the Hannah Montana-obsessed tween crowd.

2. Genre.  Many people like to hold their nose up and say, “My game transcends mere Genre.”  That may be true, but I feel the genres exist for a reason.  We should definitely try to break out of genres with new and interesting games/books/movies/stories, but it’s the true artist who creates a new genre without telling anyone.

If you’ve already got an idea that doesn’t fit neatly into a genre, great!  Go ahead and pursue it.  But if you’re strapped for ideas and don’t have the next flOw up your sleeve, it’s best to just pick the genre you feel would appeal most to your audience.

3. Tone.  Although many genres have a built in tone, putting a new spin on the genre by using a different tone e.g. a World War II comedy or a dark puzzle game could help set you apart from the crowd.  Sean of the Dead, for instance, mixed zombie and comedy to a moviegoer’s delight.  Don’t make this choice lightly.  A comedy WWII game done poorly could at best not create any interest, but it could also offend veterans and military personnel in general.

4. Gameplay.  Determine how the game will be played.  Is it a 2D side scroller, is it a 3D shooter, is it a click-and-match puzzle game?  How will the user interact with your game?  This covers both the buttons a user pushes as well as how the character/avatar/block/thing reacts on screen.

Of all the decisions you make, this is probably the most important decision because it is the crux of the game.  Your game would not be a “game” without it.  A great concept with awesome graphics and a good story will fail if the gameplay is clunky or difficult.  A mediocre concept with mediocre graphics and a mediocre story that has great and interesting gameplay will do much better.

5. Platform.  Choosing a platform often will come down to money.  If you have gobs of money you might want to consider one of the high end platforms like the Wii, Xbox 360, or Playstation 3.  But then, you also have to deal with game publishers and many other headaches.  Other platforms like the iPhone, Flash, or Silverlight have a much lower cost of entry.  Your choice of platform will help determine your revenue stream i.e. if you can monetize the game directly (probably inadvisable) or use advertising/licensing to defray costs or simply give it away as a freebie.  It can also determine development costs, and will most of all determine where and how your game will be viewed and played.

6. Goals.  Set realistic, measurable goals for how you (and your boss, and his/her boss) will classify this experiment as a success or failure.  Do you want to increase traffic to your site?  Do you want direct revenue?  What does your boss want?  Answering these questions on the front end will save lots of headaches (and possibly your job).

So, go ahead and get started making your game.  If nothing else…Solitaire can now be classified as “Research.”

Back in the first post of 2008 on this blog, I predicted that 2008 would be the year of Reputation Management.  Given the trends we’d seen in customer referrals, it seemed like a pretty safe bet. 

Over the course of the year, we did indeed gain some buzz monitoring / reputation management contracts, which we successfully completed.  However, reputation management was not an over-riding discussion point throughout the year.  Just as Local Search wasn’t in 2006 or Mobile Search in 2007, it was just a part of the bigger picture of internet marketing.  Although, you could say that each was indeed a larger part of that picture by the end of each of those years.

SEO and potentially, PPC can be large parts of your reputation management solution, social media involvement can help your SEO and reputation management, and so on and so forth.  What you really need to look at for 2009 is that bigger picture.  Where does everything fit together?  Where are the holes in your internet marketing plan?  Where should you focus your budget, and how flexible can you make your spend?

In 2009, what I’d like you to do is not to focus on the shining promise of ‘the next new thing’ at the expense of everything that’s already working for you.  But instead, keep an eye out for the potential of that next new thing, and be prepared to test and see if it can / will work for you, either now or in the future, and how it plugs in with what you’re doing now.