Blown away

So you already know that I think that flipboard is pretty cool but this morning I am literally blown away by the Facebook and Twitter integration. Flipboard accesses your accounts and pulls in the latest posts, photos, tweets, links and then publishes it into a magazine format. You have to see it to truly get how impressive this is. If you don’t have an iPad find someone who does and check it out. With personal publishing like this traditional options continue to become less significant in my world. Any publisher putting up pay walls or barriers to their content should think about what technology like flipboard means to their business.

Tweet what you eat

Will power is the biggest reason why diets fail, now you can confess all on twitter by tweeting everything you eat.  It is thought that we underestimate the amount we eat each day by up to 40% so tweeting might just keep you more honest.  You can also limit who gets to see your tweets so you can set up a diet support group….  http://tweetwhatyoueat.com/

Twitter as a sales channel

Smart brands are already recognising the potential and power of twitter as a direct sales channel.  Dell have suggested that it will become more important than search or affiliates on their marketing plans.  For brands who have a loyal list of followers on twitter it provides a perfect target audience for the sale of more products.  Other brands are offering discounts and special offers to their followers, Moo.com recently did this well to celebrate their birthday, tweeting daily offers.  We will see social media becoming increasingly critical to driving sales.

Strength in numbers?

We already know it is not about reaching audiences any more it is about putting yourself in the right place to be discovered by the right people.  The focus is not shouting at as many people as possible until they give in and buy your product, it is more subtle than that it is about having a conversation with a few people who might care enough to tell their friends.  Advertisers want to get their brands in front of people who can afford to buy them so don’t walk away from a small group of Tweeters because the TV campaign holds great promise of numbers of eyeballs.  This quote from Wired sums it up well for me…..

‘Sure, 300,000 Twitter followers isn’t the same as an umpty-million TV audience, but those 300K people are highly selective neophiles with disposable income. They have bloody iPhones and everything. At some point, he’ll recommend a prose book and the number of people tapping their way to Amazon for a one-click-and-back-to-their-Kindle-app is going to be eminently trackable. That may very well tell an interesting story.’  warren Ellis Wired Magazine