While the drawbacks of getting sucked into reading seemingly random inputs from seemingly random people you follow on Twitter are pretty obvious, the possibilities for focused input, or even a true focus group, are amazing.
When I was an Acquisitions Officer in the Air Force, I worked for about 8 months on a program that processed security clearances and was given a team to work all the data on how fast the process was going, and presented daily metrics to the government agency in charge of the program. The words my boss told me when he gave me the duties, “The guy who reports the metrics can prove just about anything he wanted to,” turned out to be so truthful it was a little frightening.
The experience has made me a numbers and info junky on par with die hard rotisserie baseball geeks. And Twitter is filling that addiction to information like no other analytic tools ever has.
The magic is in its mission statement, a chance for people around the world to instantly share with others what they are doing. It also gives you the chance to look into the minds of those same millions of people, and see what they are doing, thinking, buying, or dissing.
This power is easily seen in the quick Twitter chatter scene during big television events as people who are looking to be a part of the mass experiences fire off snarky comments as an organic commentary track. This power has been most prominent in watching the ups and downs during the 2008 presidential election and the early days of the Obama Presidential Administration.
As a metrics nut, I like to lot watch the Twitter feeds during big events on TV, like new episodes of 24 and live performance shows nights on American Idol. But the real fun has come during President Obama’s television news conferences. Especially the ones that delay prime time television. Instant praise, instant hate, and instant color commentary is available to anyone willing to scroll thought a few pages of tweets.
Any marketer or sales manager can do a Twitter topic search on their company and find out exactly what is being said exactly when people are thinking about it. That was a good thing for the marketing team at Skittles that decided to make their Twitter search page the actual corporate product website, and a bad thing for Motrin after the Motrin moms took to blogosphere over a commercial that didn’t go over so well with them.
Monitoring your Twitter conversation does give you lots of insight into the thoughts of your brand or product. Just be ready to dismiss some of the more silly or snarky comments. After all, we are still talking about people using the anonymousness of the internet (even if it’s getting harder and harder to stay anonymous) to be a little to open and honest, with little regard of the consequences of the words going out to the world.
Today is a day of celebration! March 7 of National Be Heard Day.
Shannon Cherry, founder and president of Cherry Communications, created National be Heard Day in 2004 to call attention to the 145+ million people who are either own a small business or is an independent professional in the United States and use low-cost marketing efforts to get the word out. The day urges these professionals to find their voice, tell their story and be heard through marketing and publicity.
Shannon’s goal as PR specialist is to help entrepreneurs find their voice, tell your story, and be heard. And it is hard to pass up great tool to help you make that happen.
My goal is to help you move your business forward faster. You can get a great head start by claiming some of the tools Shannon is offering today. And no price is better than free.
I have found myself with some bona fide free time as I am winding down to the end of 2008. As a result, I'm having a less stressful time in my 2009 goal making and business planning. Yes, actually goal making and business planning and not just scribbling stuff down on random sheets of paper to shuffle through for the first few weeks of the year. Even better, I have been able to make time to research and put my ideas into some semblance of logical order (thought spelling and grammar will always be a little suspect).
As I continue setting up my goal plans, I have been sifting through some of the on-line tools I have collected to see which ones will be most useful for getting in gear for the new year (check out my mad rhyming skills, yo!), and wanted to share a few with y'all. Here are some sources for free stuff to get your business or personal life in line for the year 2009 (I'm a poet and I didn't even know it...):
Today's TQ
Today's TQ offers a daily system designed to remind you to achieve your personal best. That's right, remind you that you can and should give your all everyday to stay committed to your dreams. They start you out with a extensive test to gauge you current level in 10 factors to your overall success, and for a small fee you can purchase your own personal book on yourself and audio programs to help you raise your scores. But you want free stuff, and they have plenty of pdfs with calendars and planning tools to help you out.
Have you been putting up Facebook status updates for the past three months proclaiming you're cleaning your office? Well I have, and I'm no where near finished yet. Assuming you have the same issue with clutter creep, but aren't so vocal about it, the Fly Lady has all the tricks you could ever dream of, and says if you take it 15 minutes at a time, you'll eventually find your way to clean. We won't go into how many 15 minute intervals you can accumulate in three months.
Your need for free software alternatives and mobile access to computer programs are both solved at PortableApps.com, where a USB flash drive is all you need to carry your favorite computer programs with you, along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more. Portable versions of popular open source applications are offered here free, with no spyware and no limitations.
For free guilt moral support for getting yourself in shape this year, I'm offering up a new site I am still getting the hang of: Dailymile. It is described as a social training log for runners, triathletes, and cyclists, and is an easy way to share your training with friends and stay motivated, assuming you need a little one-up-manship as part of your motivation. Look up and share local races and post your workout time to throw in the face of compare with friends you make on the site.
Welcome to my new blog. This is where I will chronicle the next phase of mis-adventures of my life. Thank you for staying on the ride, and for you newcomers to the inside of my mental mania, I will do my best to make sure the trip is both entertaining and educational.
Life In Fast Forward: The Blog is still a bit of a work in progress. Keep checking in for new posts and site updates.
About Blog
This blog supports some of the thoughts and interjections from the folks at Fast Forward Business Properties. Our ideas, things we test, and a few random thoughts will show up here.
Name: J. Cleveland Payne
Home: Little Rock, Arkansas, United States
About Me: News is my profession, so it only fits that I am a news junkie. I'm a radio show/segment producer for a news/talk radio station in Little Rock, Arkansas.
