Dunkin’ Donuts is a business that, when it is working well, becomes a part of a consumer’s day-to-day life.  As such, it finds itself appearing in the vast stream of consciousness of Twitter.  By being active on Twitter, Dunkin’ Donuts can keep a pulse on how they are being perceived by their target base.  They are able to converse with their customers, and have another FREE venue for announcing promotions and new products.

Almost any end-consumer business can benefit by this example.  While Twitter is still not a good way, in my opinion, to grow your base or reach a lot of new customers, it is a great way to connect with and cultivate your current base.

Does anyone know who created this masterpiece?

(Click to view larger image)

“A bunch of random facts about internet marketing, all of which are worth knowing, regardless of their randomness:

1. Internet marketing is hard. Really hard. It’s not something that easily succumbs to a ‘miracle system’. Guys like Shoemoney have it right – they have systems, but they don’t say it’s easy.

2. Internet marketing can’t be done by a computer.

3. You’re still marketing to human beings. That’s why #2 is true. As long as we’re selling to humans, we’re going to need humans to handle the marketing.

4. ‘Internet’ marketing is more of a medium than a method. Marketing is a method/technique. Internet where we now do it. Yes, the techniques have changed a little, but not as much as you might think.

5. It’s measurable. While you can’t automate internet marketing, you can measure it. If you aren’t measuring each click, sale, interaction and citation for you and your business, you’re losing a lot of data.”

To read the rest of the internet marketing facts from Ian Lurie at Conversation Marketing click here.

Social Media COJONES!

SCEA (Sony Computer Entertainment of America) runs the blog (http://blog.us.playstation.com/). They do just about everything right. First, they have great regular posts that both take advantage of current hot topics, but also have great personable content. All blog posts are credited to actual authors, who often flow up by responding to comments. They also allow users to not only comment but also to whine, rant, and complain about whatever they think SCEA is doing wrong. I, myself, have complained more than once and have never had a comment rejected. Yes, SCEA puts their flaws out for everyone to drag through the mud.

Everyone is afraid of the negative press they will get in the untamed wilds of social media, but SCEA isn’t phased by it. Whatever pain this may cause is far outweighed by immense amount of traffic and exposure their products get. Their Facebook page has over 700,000 followers at the time of posting this. That is over half-a-million users they have free advertising to at any point in time!

Social Media Common Sense!

It takes more than just COJONES, SCEA also has the best common sense approach to managing the chaos. SCEA only responds to users who are asking questions, or posting reasonable complaints and issues, but just let’s the whiners carry alone. This is very smart, because it trains their users to be polite. Fans know they have a better chance of being heard if they don’t just rant and rave. The point here is that they DO RESPOND, just in a very methodical fashion that builds a great fan base. Second, more often than not, other fans will just come to SCEA’s defense without them having to lift a finger. And again, all this just builds great traffic.

SCEA also does a great job of re-posting and re-linking all their own content. On weekends, SCEA posts a “recap” listing all their posts from the previous week, as well as a “what we read on the web” which is, of course, a listing of their best press across the web. This also helps their web strategy by encouraging other sites wanting traffic to be positive toward SCEA products.

Even if you don’t care about Sony (or hate them), it is worth following their social media for a while, just so see some real pros at work!

SCEA Blog: http://blog.us.playstation.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/SonyPlaystation
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PlayStation

Yes, like rats leaving a sinking ship, all the cyber-sex prostitutes, multi-level marketing scammers, male enhancement salesmen, and all other species of spammers are bailing out of their MySpace strategies and have moved on to Twitter. I don’t know what kind of official projection statistics have been done regarding the amount of spam and the growing success of a social media website have been done, but its solid enough evidence for me.

My own MySpace page friends list has dwindled to almost nothing as even my real friends are focusing on Facebook. I hardly ever visit it, and sorry Tom, but your just not worth it. (I never liked you anyway). While I am sure MySpace’s remaining loyal followers, independent punk rock groups and pedophiles, will keep it trudging along for a couple years, it seems clear to me it’s days are numbered.

While I am sure many will disagree with my incredibly scientific analysis, MySpace needs to think of something Facebook and Twitter haven’t thought of yet to attract users back. In the meantime, I will be sticking with Facebook and Twitter where I find real people actively participating and random anonymous women still think I am “hot and sexy”.

What an awesome surprise this morning to read about how the Mayo Clinic used Social Media to help their marketing. It is a 60 slide presentation, but the best slide is number 20.

Another good comment that came out of this is, “don’t promote to the media, be the media.” What a paradigm shift for big companies to make…the question is will they?