Yesterday the online social media guide Mashable posted an article with four great tools to track Twitpics in (mostly) real-time. I believe this offers marketers an opportunity to reach out to and communicate with people who are discussing a company or product.
Of the four 3rd party applications (Pingwire, Twitcaps, PicFog, Twicsy), I liked PicFog the best thanks its search and the fact that it displays the number of retweets and when the image was uploaded.
I wrote earlier how I was surprised that the top 25 communicators as ranked by PRWeek don’t have much of a presence on Twitter, and neither did their respective companies.
Whether they understand the tool or not, I believe there is some real value for helping build relationships with consumers and clients, and giving individuals a personalized experience.
Take McDonald’s, for example. Sure, the company is a franchise, and every franchise owner is probably responsible for doing some of their own marketing, but there is a national branding push too.
Imagine if someone was listening in to what was being said and posted about McDonald’s on Twitter. Do you think they might learn something?
Below is a picture of the image stream that PicFog returned when I did a search for McDonalds.
You can see there’s a variety of McDonalds’ related images – from McDonalds’ branded cars to a McCafe cup.
There’s also a picture comment about the back of a McDonald’s receipt and the fact that it’s advertising instead of coupons like at HEB. I always felt that putting a coupon on the back of a receipt was a great way to ensure a quick repeat customer, and obviously this McDonalds patron felt the same way.
Or how about this picture stream about the Boston Red Sox…
This particular user says they aren’t even a fan of baseball, but they love how cute the baby-sized red socks with the BoSox logo on them are.
If someone was monitoring this, they might reach out to the user and mention that next Tuesday was family appreciation day at Fenway Park and would she be interested in free tickets for the family? I’m willing to bet they would have a faithful fan for life. Their kids would be Red Sox faithful fans for life…
Let’s move on to an internet company – eBay. Surely they can find some way to utilize Twitter, right? They do appear to have a Twitter account at least…
In the image below, a Twitter user has posted an image of an HTC phone called the TyTN II that the user is going to be selling on eBay.
This might be a great chance for eBay to join the conversation and offer a seller’s discount of 10 percent for sharing it on Twitter. After all, it’s all exposure for eBay.
Speaking of HTC, here’s a picture from Twitcaps showing a stream from a search for HTC. In this instance, there’s a user who has posted an image of an HTC phone that they want.
A quick search on Twitter will turn up the user’s profile, and in this case, they made it very easy for a marketer to find where they’re located.
HTC Twitterer
How about a local HTC retailer sending an @ message to the user saying they have the phone he’s looking for in stock and if he comes in and signs up in their store, they’ll give him a 5 percent discount?
And finally here’s a sushi aficionado who lives in the Toronto area.
If the Mye Japanese Restaurant picked up on that, they could send a message to the user and let him know the specials of the night and the drink specials for the week. He may already know about the restaurant, but it might also win him away from a competitor.
For the adopters of the latest marketing technologies, these ideas are probably nothing new. But as I pointed out in an earlier post, there isn’t always someone manning the airwaves.
I think it’s important for marketers to keep an eye on what’s being said about their company and their industry, and tools like Twitter, accompanied by 3rd party applications are a fantastic way to do it!
By: Zack S.
