In the span of 24 hours, 3 comprehensive articles about how to use Twitter for business was published. New York Times, Inc. magazine and Twitter each publish a descriptive article on how local businesses can use Twitter for marketing and business development:

New York Times
Inc. Magazine
Twitter

Let me know if the articles provided are useful. Cheers!

Most companies like to treat their social media campaign like some sort of a big party. They create a platform or join a platform, announce  loudly their arrival and try to look for the most ‘in’ and cool guys around and try to influence them, hoping that they will in turn spread the word for the company. The problem with this approach is that the party is already in full swing, people already have their drinks, and no one was actually waiting for you to show up.

One of the secrets behind the brand ‘Singapore Airline’ is the creation of the ‘Singapore Girl’. They understand the simple fact that brand without face is useless, and that people love to connect with people, not logos. Therefore, they created a ‘caring, cheerful’ Singapore Girl to connect with their customers.

In June, Mashable announce that the “Facebook movie” will enter into production this year. The casting search is already underway and Shia LaBeouf of the “Transformers” fame is said to be short listed for the role of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. While this “Facebook Movie” is going to be a big budget, Hollywood style production, the Twitter Movie will be a documentary.

Many businesses who are rejecting the idea of using Twitter as part of their online marketing mix involve the concern of ROI.It’s a geniune concern because social media is still very hard to measure for most businesses. Not many companies can be like Dell (where they made $3million dollars using Twitter alone). Most social media operates in a ‘business provide the content and users have the freedom to find out more themselves.’ model. While that sounds great for creating a long term relationship, it’s really quit hard to track.

Facebook recently announce that they have reached 250 million people around the world. That was an increase of about 50 million people in the space of 3 months. The interactive visual timeline shows how Facebook have grown over the years, beginning from US, then UK and spreading over to Europe and finally into Asia.

It has always been a debate on how Twitter is going to monetize the site and it seems like there are some baby steps taken in the form of “sponsored definition”. It’s so subtle that unless you have sharp eyes, you won’t notice the difference (Seth Simonds has been talking about this since June 23rd).