Realizing the brand-building potential, savvy business owners are leveraging Twitter to interact with customers. Twitter enables brand-to-customer conversations through comfortable, open forums. In fact, 20% of tweets are about brands, and they come from both consumers and businesses.

Comcast uses Twitter to scan for complaints and engage with customers. The idea was born when someone in the company realized scores of public complaints against Comcast were being vented via Twitter. In response, the cable company built a team of 11 people whose function is simply to scour the site and respond to Comcast-related tweets. Much to many users’ surprise, the Comcast team responds to tweets, identifying themselves as a company representative and asking if they can help. Comcast execs are highly satisfied with the unique dialogue Twitter has enabled, noting that the conversations are dissimilar to the typical phone complaints the company receives. “[Twitter is] a little more personal. More back-and-forth discussions, and it’s less formal. And it gives immediacy to interactions,” says Frank Eliason, Comcast’s director of digital care.

For instance, an angry Comcast customer wrote, “I would suggest you tell the people in charge of the money to do their jobs.” A moment later, she was compelled to tweet again: “P.S. If my credit score is negative, it is your fault for not paying enough attention or not calling off your dogs.” In response, Eliason suggested (to a BusinessWeek writer who was observing his work) to reply and simply thank her for her suggestion, with a period at the end. “I wouldn’t do a smiley face when we’re doing a collections issue,” he says. Although not a quick fix for some deeply rooted business issues, Eliason and his team’s work has made Comcast accessible and trustworthy to customers. When Twitter users think Comcast, they think Eliason. “Right now I have 5,700 followers. They know about my family Web site. It gives a face to Comcast,” he told BusinessWeek.

A number of corporations have followed Comcast’s lead, using Twitter as a means to reach out to consumers and resolve complaints. Travel companies like Virgin America use Twitter regularly to communicate everything from vacation specials to possible flight delays. But Virgin takes its Twitter presence a step further than the competition, communicating much more than just deals and flight status, and asking for open communication from its customers in return. And its more than 20,000 followers deliver, filling Virgin’s Twitterstream with photos of themselves aboard Virgin flights or on vacations made possible by the airline. Virgin also retweets its passengers’ posts. During one flight, a recent medical school tweeted her excitement about her accomplishment and about being aboard Virgin America. Rather than congratulating her, Virgin retweeted and asked someone to buy her a drink on the flight. There was an immediate response and the surprised grad was quickly presented with a drink, compliments of Row 11.

Businesses and organizations have also made use of Tweetups to further their brand. For instance, in April 2009 the National Hockey League (NHL) worked with fans to organize a series of Tweetups that occurred simultaneously around the world. The Tweetup effort brought together 1,200 fans in 23 cities, and reached an estimated 240,000 through Twitter and millions more through press coverage, which included a mention in USA Today. Increased Twitter action on the day of the Tweetups also spurred countless brand impressions. On the opening night of the playoffs, the term “NHL” was mentioned on Twitter more than twice as often as on a normal day. And #NHLtweetup became a trending topic for the day. Now the league has a dedicated social media department and has planned more Tweetups for the 2009-2010 season.
Twitter has emerged as the hottest brand building and customer service tool on the market and, ironically, it was not created for that purpose. But corporate tweeting has spread like wildfire and has been met with praise from consumers, who appreciate the fact that there is a human being at the other end of that Twitterstream – a welcome change in today’s impersonal business world of stiff corporate policies and procedures. Using Twitter is not just for the large corporations. Twitter also gives smaller, local businesses a voice and a solution to some of the complaints of the consumer. Look out next week for some strategies and helpful tools to help you monitor your brand on Twitter and other social media.

In the past few weeks Google announced that they were no longer offering Radio and Print ads. Just another reason why Search Engine Marketing is here to stay. The inventory that Google was providing for these services were on a remnant basis and when we approached clients that may have been opened to these advertising outlets, they were not confident that these inventory sources would help them reach their goals.

The services did not offer attractive pricing for clients that have used print and radio in the past. The fact that they were not able to get choice positioning was also a negative factor that could have contributed to the downfall of Google Radio and Print ads. It was a good effort on Google’s part to try to bring in more revenue, but the fact remains that Search Engine Marketing still remains to be the best ROI producers for most companies and businesses that advertise. This is simply why print ad revenue continues to dive down year after year.

What we thought was attractive about these two particular services was the reporting capabilities that Google so often emphasized. It is hard to measure these advertising sources and even with Google’s cool tools and gadgets, it was hard to correlate the results to the advertising.

The main lesson learned from this endeavor: Search Engine Marketing is the best bang for your buck.

Many businesses invest hundreds if not thousands of dollars into their websites, hoping that it will generate sales and leads. Far too often, pros in Search Engine Marketing come across websites that, plain and simple, are not conducive to maximizing their business goals. Here are some quick tips to help enhance your user experience that should result in an increase in conversions.

1. Calls To Action — Sites that lack calls to action tend to receive a lower conversion rate than ones that plaster their website directing searchers to actions. It could be as simple as adding buttons that say, “Sign Up Now,” “Request Info,” etc. From our experience when these simple additions make it on to webpages the conversion rate dramatically increases. Searchers need to be “told” what to do, or you risk losing that sale or lead and your visitor will bounce off your site.
2. Forms — If your goal is to increase leads, it is a good idea to have a simple form on every page. When a form is on every page it increases your chances of capturing your visitor. You want to make it very easy for people to contact you without having to search the whole website.
3. Make your site “sticky” — It is one thing to have an attractive site, but you also need to make sure that your site is sticky. The longer you can keep a visitor on your website, the better your chances of having your visitor complete your goal. When evaluating whether or not your site is sticky, first take a look at your analytics. Analyze the “top content” pages to identify entry and exit pages. Another way to increase site stickiness is to provide a summary of the topic and have the visitor click on a link to “learn more” or to add a call to action at the end of the your summary.
4. Content — Yes, content is still king, but you need to separate content on your main site vs the content you would include on a landing page. Landing pages should provide enough information to get your point across, but shouldn’t be a novel. When people are looking for answers, they want instant answers that they can get from a glance. Bullet points are especially helpful for landing pages. Just make sure you don’t forget your calls to action and forms!
5. Fix Dead Links — You may not be aware of dead links but fix these issues ASAP. Dead links can make your website look unreliable and unprofessional. Regularly check on your website on your own to catch these sandtraps. The last thing you want is a malfunctioning “submit” button.

With a little time and some quick fixes, you should be able to increase sales and leads.

Yesterday, Microsoft announced that it was laying of 5000 people from its workforce.  Sure we can blame the failing economy, but many people are contributing this major layoff on the Window’s Vista operating system. While it has not been yet reported if any of the layoffs are going to affect the Microsoft Advertising division, it has been reported that they are looking to expand this division post-layoff.

Microsoft AdCenter has come a long way in the past couple years. One of the last major search engines to step up its advertising platform, I have to admit they are doing a great job of trying to keep up with Google’s advertising technologies. AdCenter has already surpassed Yahoo’s Panama system, which is often far more complicated and tedious to manage (try making bulk changes on the fly!!!).

Recently added to MSN’s arsenal is the desktop software (currently in Beta) that rivals Google’s Adwords Editor.  Microsoft Advertising has also expanded it’s program to offer a more CPA-focused capabilities.  While the advertising programs keep improving one thing that MSN should concentrate on is expanding its user-base.

eVolving Interactive uses MSN to bring in supplementary traffic for its clients. We have found that the inventory has consistently stayed low. I believe that MSN could be a leader in Search Engine Marketing if they did a better job trying to attract everyday people into using it’s search engine.

In a time of economic distress, Google still managed to increase it’s revenue 18% from the previous year’s Q4, according to ClickZ’s, Zachary Rodgers.

The article mentions that CPC’s keep increasing and this is a sign that people are still clicking on Sponsored Links. This is not surprise to anyone that works in Search Engine Marketing (SEM). We have seen increasing prices for clicks especially on Google. We have yet to see any CPC’s decrease without campaign optimizations in order to adhere to best practices on increasing quality scores.

In fact, every day we have seen that we have been having to increase our bids to maintain results. The downside is that this affords advertisers even less clicks.

Of of Google’s SVP’s was quoted as saying, “If a recession caused less commerce to take place, that would adversely impact us and you’d see CPCs go down,” he said. “The CPC question as we see it is really driven by users, and it’s not quite as much the number of advertisers coming in and out at any given time.” (source:http://www.clickz.com/3632477)

I don’t think this necessarily means that commerce is driving ad spend, but I believe it’s people having more time to surf the internet. Many of the ads that account for Google’s ad revenue is probably coming from service oriented advertisers–lawyers, insurance, etc.

One example of this is the law industry, we have seen that CPC’s have been steadily increasing no matter if you have a great quality score or not. The traffic is there–people are losing jobs–they need a way to make money some how.