Making millions on Twitter

December 8, 2009 By 1 Comment

If you’re looking for an example of a significant financial return on Twitter, then Dell has long been used as an example – and you can expect it to be quoted even more often after revealing revenues have now risen to $6.5 million globally via Twitter.

Of course that requires almost 1.5 million followers for their main @DellOutlet account, Dell Canada, the $800,000 from @DellnoBrasil and over $150,000 from @DellHomeSalesCA , but it’s still a mightily impressive amount.

Key points for the future from Dell Chief Blogger Lionel Menchaca?

  • Streamline our presence in social media networks, create meaningful content for customers and continue to increase our connections with them in those places
  • Focus on building a tighter integration between Dell.com, Support.Dell.com, our Dell Community sites with our presence in social networks
  • Continue our focus on scaling support of social media initiatives into the Dell business units

There’s a few more bits on the Dell post worth reading.

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Virality on Twitter: the #welovethenhs trending topic

August 17, 2009 By Leave a Comment

If you happened to catch my previous post, you may have been wondering what had prompted Britain to start defending the NHS on Twitter.

Well, Dave Cushman (Disclosure – friend and former colleague), has a nice summary of the factors he feels were involved in the creation and spread of #welovethenhs.

They include the fact that something many people cared about was attacked, it’s a belief that could be shared by many people who had been emotionally affected, and the tools etc were really quick and simple to use to get involved.

It did have a small bit of celebrity involvement from British comedy writer Graham Linehan, but I suspect this trend had it’s own momentum.

Of course, as a further postscript to the image from my previous post – within the same day Les Paul had died

Dave also raised the issue of how newspapers and organisations feel odd when they’re reporting on Twitter – as I wrote before, this is the stage where we finally accept that TV, Radio, Internet and Mobile have made print-based newspapers into paper archives. There’s still a place for them, but if you were able to study the numbers of people discovering breaking news of a specific event on Twitter, for example, and compared that with those seeing it for the first time, I would be that one is increasing almost as fast as the other is falling. And that is without considering how many people would hear about the event, e.g. Michael Jackson dying, from friends/colleagues/family before they got near a newspaper.

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Pepsi Cola promoting Twitter – Well done or raw?

June 12, 2009 By 3 Comments

So Pepsi has included a Twitter tag printed on 1.4 million cans of the new Pepsi Raw drink here in the UK.

Firstly, it’s great to see something new being done in the UK by a multinational, rather than watching the U.S. from afar. The account is @pepsiraw, there’s also a website (pepsiraw.co.uk), and a Facebook page.

Pepsi Raw by dhsingadia on Flickr (CC Licence)

Pepsi Raw by dhsingadia on Flickr (CC Licence)

Now, I have to admit I have my doubts about whether this will be done effectively. For starters, I wrote a post last year on my marketing blog about ‘How Coke and Pepsi are wasting their online strategy‘ – it was kickstarted by Pepsi’s outreach to prominent bloggers and promotion of The Pepsi Cooler friendfeed room.  The fact that contributions were onlyposted byPepsi staff and all comments are held for moderation during U.S. working hours made for a pretty stilted attempt at conversation. And now it just repeats the @pepsico Twitter account (With just 2335 followers).

The early signs for @pepsiraw aren’t much better. One reply from 20 messages since April 23, 2009, with the rest simply broadcasting the next location where free samples are being given out. And so far just 363 people have deemed it worth following.

The lesson here is that is doesn’t matter whether Pepsi gave out 1 can with the Twitter address or 1.4 million. As somone who drinks a ridiculous amount of caffeinated soft drinks, and was intrigued to try Raw, I found the address, looked at the tiny amount of non-replies, and then went and had conversations with other people.

The question is whether it will change if more followers appear or will the Raw Twitter promotion stay underdone?

Filed Under: Case Studies, twitter Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Just off to another brilliant example of Twitter for events

April 15, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I’m just about to pack up my laptop and head over to Aperitweat, a cool gathering of Tweeple organised by the inimitable @tojulius.

It’s been publicised via his Twitter friends, registration was via Twtvite, a live Twitterstream will be at the event (hashtags #aptw or #aperitweat), and the whole thing is being streamed live via Ustream.

So in addition to the skills and contacts Julius already has (see the eventmanagerblog for examples), the marketing cost is nothing for a brilliant range of coverage which has packed the place to capacity.

Another example of the ability for self-forming events for little or no cost.

And that’s just a relatively low-profile example in a week when Twitter was used to attempt revoluation in Moldova (see some coverage via Nick Carr and All Things Digital).

And it’s in the week when the first drill has been created with some of the amazing $250,000 raised by the Twestival event in 2020 cities worldwide.


Twestival Well Drilling – Day 1 from Ethiopia – charity: water from charity: water on Vimeo.

See more of the Twestival videos on Live Earth.

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