With just a background image and some color changes here and there, some creative individuals have created unique Twitter profile pages.

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Djurdjica Selec

Chris Spooner

Wolfgang Bartelme

Emily Chang

Franz Jeitz

Garcya

Khayyam Wakil

Arron Lock

Youri

Myth: The Web is Not a Luxury Market

Fact: According to an eMarketer report in 2007, the number of affluent Internet users will grow from 43.7 million in 2006 to 57.1 million in 2011.

Challenges that luxury brands face in Internet marketing:

• Balancing exclusivity and how it chooses to interact with online users
• Hesitation in experimenting with Internet marketing strategies in fear that such untested strategies are too risky for their brand image
• High costs of maintaining a consistent (in terms of aesthetics) image across their online assets (websites, apps, etc)

The article then goes on to offer some solutions to these challenges; aligning the brand marketers’ perceptions of the brand with the consumers’; creating exclusive, invite-only sites; and reputation management.

Lastly, it looks at how Gucci and Mercedes tackled Internet marketing with very different approaches but similarly favorable results.

Read the full article here

Read the full story here: Michael Jackson’s Facebook Fan Page Surges to #1

• the average user has 126 followers
• only 20% of its traffic comes through the Twitter website, the rest is assumed to come from 3rd party applications
• Twitter usage peaked at about 3000 tweets per second during President Obama’s inauguration

These facts were presented along Weaver’s talk at QCon 2009 to explain the architecture of the system.

Here are some of the highlights from the report:

* 79.79% failed to provide a homepage URL
* 75.86% of users have not entered a bio in their profile
* 68.68% have not specified a location
* 55.50% are not following anyone
* 54.88% have never tweeted
* 52.71% have no followers

Mashable! talks about what these figures mean in detail in this article.

We’ve been overexposed to advertising.  We hear them on the radio, watch them on tv and see their glittering banners on the Internet.  We go to their websites, browse their portfolios and read their testimonials. We walk away with no more confidence in their offerings than before we started.  Enter the Internet Citizen Marketer.

Internet Citizen Marketing?

One of the mantras to success in the last decade was to “have friends in high places”.  Today it may be more relevant to think about “having friends in many places”.  IM (instant messaging) and social networks on the Internet have made it possible and enjoyable to interact with friends on a daily (if not hourly) basis.  We share all kinds of information, from important life-issues to trivial matters.  Very often, without even realizing, we endorse brands by giving a quick review or recommendation to our friends.

Who is the Internet Citizen Marketer?

You and me. Anyone who has a camera phone, owns a blog, uploads photos, writes reviews, leaves comments, participates in a social network etc, is a potential marketer for your brand.

Why Internet Citizen Marketing Works

The most obvious reason is because Internet Citizen Marketers do not market brands, products or services for a living.  They have no agenda or incentive besides sharing their experiences with like-minded people.  Consumers will have increasing faith of your products after reading about them multiple times, from different sources.

Another reason why Internet Citizen Marketing is becoming more effective is the breaking down of barriers between people.  Consider how common it is to go online, meet a total stranger and add him or her to your network of friends.  In fact most successful social networks encourage you to tag or bookmark another user based on common likes and interests.  Generally, people put more weightage on the opinions of these total strangers whom they consider experts compared to (somtimes) even close friends or relatives.

The Social Networking User Behaviour Study conducted in April 2007 showed that 1 out of every 3 internet users refer to sites with user-created content like YouTube or Amazon to help make decisions on whether or not to buy something.

Another study shows that as much as up to 90 percent of consumers acquire enough information from surfing and reading reviews from other users to become reliable experts to friends and family.  Though individually, they each have a relatively small sphere of influence, the information that they share can significantly influence purchase behaviour.

The Takeaway

Most of the time, businesses hear about marketing with social mediums like Facebook or Twitter and get excited to jump on the bandwagon.  However, the most common questions asked is usually about ROI or what type of returns to expect.  Marketers will be disappointed to learn that is difficult to account for social network marketing in quantifiable terms.  When you make a new friend, can you attach a value to him or her?  You never know when friends will provide you with a referral, but it usually doesn’t happen until they know you well enough.  In order for them to want to know you better, they have to be genuinely interested in you.  Come on too hard with your sales message, and they will recognize you for a spammer.

Universal Friend-Making 101: Stop telling them about you, instead ask them to tell you more about themselves.

South Korea which has the highest number of broadband connections per capita may have reasons to justify their new regulation.  In the country where 75% of households are connected to the Internet on broadband, cyberviolence (from harassment to online death-threats) is on the Internet are on the rise.There have been dozens of people indicted on charges of criminal contempt or slander for writing or spreading malicious online insults about victims.  Many victims of cyberviolence have lost their jobs, some even their lives, due to internet users marking them as pubic enemies.

“The idea is to make people feel more responsible for what they are posting on the Net,” said Oh Sang Kyoon, a director at the Ministry of Information and Communications. “Victims cannot live a normal life. They quit jobs and run away from society. They even flee the country. It’s like lynching victims in a ‘people’s court on the Web.’”

I can’t remember the last time I had Skittles, the rainbow-colored sweet and sour candy.  I had all but forgotten about it until I saw mention of it on Twitter.  And then I saw it on YouTube, then Wikipedia and then Facebook.  Then I heard about it on Twitter again.  Finally, it was picked up on the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and the rest was history.

Skittles made waves in the online marketing community early last month when it decided to relaunch their website.  What was special about the website was that it was in fact a collage of different websites.  It had an “about us” section that was pulled from Wikipedia, videos from YouTube, a “chatter” section that pulled posts (tweets) from Twitter, among other user-created content from various Web 2.0 properties.  By leveraging on these social media properties all at once, the Internet community was suddenly hit from multiple channels about Skittles.  What quickly ensued was a sharp spike in buzz around the brand.

Within 48 hours, everyone from blog owners to internet marketers were discussing Skittles.  So were spammers and pranksters.  The internet marketing campaign soon started a negative downward spiral.  Users exploited the twitter-skittles “hack” and started to post comments ranging from the purely unrelated to profanities about the candy.  Skittles eventually took down the Twitter portion of the site.  Even then, the Skittles campaign had already achieved text-book case-study status.

Skittles is a generally well-known brand.  If a lesser-known brand were to pull off the same tactic, it may not have suffered/enjoyed the same results.  What Skittles managed to do, was to gain critical mass for its campaign within an extremely short period of time, a feat that is crucial to internet marketing.

Internet marketers have been taking both sides of the campaign.  Some think that Skittles’ courageous adoption of the web 2.0 properties paid off big-time, while others scoffed at giving too much freedom to consumers, a freedom which was eventually abused.

Personally, I feel that the outcome from the Skittles campaign was positive.  Prior to the campaign, there was little mention of the brand or even candy in general on the Internet.  Then suddenly, literally everyone was talking about  it.  Skittles could have spent half a million dollars on new tvcs yet not come close to this level of buzz around its brands.  Indeed, there were some nasty comments left on its website, but I am sure a majority of visitors to the site realized that this was the work of immature pranksters, something bound to happen in today’s social web environment.  These visitors would normally not have even thought of dropping by the site.

The lesson we take away from this campaign:  we see the potential of using web 2.0 as a marketing channel but at the same time realize that it is a raw and untamed force.  Study social media marketing and master it, because if you don’t, someone else will.

Let’s suppose you set up a retail store.  Probably one of the first things you consider is location.  You try to find a location with the highest amount of traffic that fits within your budget.  Once you’ve gotten your location, you’ll do some design and renovation work, and start packing your store with merchandise.  Now that your store is ready, you might put an advertisement out in the papers or magazines, or send out flyers around your area.  You understand that its about:

1. Getting in the way of traffic
2. Providing the traffic with the product/service that they are looking for
3. Marketing to attract more traffic

If you get this 3 principles right, chances are your retail store will do fine.

Now think about setting up a website for your business.  A website is an extension of your business, it’s an online marketing tool and a “2D” version of your store.  Since it is a variation of your physical store, we should apply the same 3 principles to your website.

1. Getting in the way of traffic

The majority of traffic to your website will come from search engines so the first thing you want to do is to get indexed by Google, Yahoo and MSN, the 3 big ones.  Then you have to think about the other places where you could “set up shop” on the Internet.  Sites like online business directories and classifieds can be a good referral source.  To narrow down your target audience, go for the ones that are specific to your industry or geographic location.  The Internet is a huge marketplace, you’ll need to actively search for sites where you can promote your business.  Make it a weekly practice to post information of your business on a new website (make sure it’s relevant though).  It’s free most of the time so no excuses!

2. Providing the traffic with the product/service that they are looking for

Think about the visitors who will be accessing your site soon.  They will be coming to your site with the intention of gaining more knowledge about a particular topic.  If you have a site about golf clubs, and foresee that the majority of visitors will be golf club fanatics, tell them all they need to know and more about golf clubs.  Your goal here is to turn everyone who is interested in your products into a repeat visitor.  Just like in the 3D world, someone who stumbles upon your shop for the first time may not be ready to buy anything, but you want him to remember your shop when he is.

Make sure your website is professionally designed.  It helps provide a better image of your business and improves the browsing experience of visitors. Sometimes, the content and structures of websites are so ambiguous that visitors do not know what they are offering.  The worst thing that happens is when visitors are led to your store and see that it has nothing to offer.

3. Marketing to attract more traffic

You’ve listed your site on search engines and directories, and optimized the content on your site.  You’re ready to handle any leads and enquiries generated from your site, but your site is not running at full capacity.  Here’s where the marketing really starts.  You have an arsenal of marketing tools to choose from:

• Email Marketing
• Search Engine Marketing
• Social Media Networking
• Participation in Forums
• Link Building Campaigns
• Article Marketing
• etc.

Internet marketing covers many methods and you would probably think of  some ways that are unique to your industry.   You could even mix online and offline marketing to achieve better results.  Just remember that your objective is to make your online presence as visible as possible over multiple channels and in the process engage potential visitors.

To sum it up: It takes the same (if not more) effort and time to market your website as you would a retail store.  It’s tough to start but once you gain momentum you’ll start to see potentially exponential results.

Of course you can try little things out here and there like PPC for example but, I really wouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket! It’s a good idea to also spread your “money” out to a few different tactical campaigns but also make sure you are keeping track of where your money is going and if you are flipping or flopping as far as profits go. With Social Network marketing you have two different options. You can use something like Myspace PPC (which most people haven’t had luck at) or you can use the free option. Places such as FaceBook and Myspace have some really awesome facets of their websites which will give you the business person more of a global outreach than ever imagined. Besides your actual profile you also have comments, PMs, groups, classifieds, bulletins, chat rooms and so much more. Even on something like FaceBook you can actually “develop” an application and integrate your business idea into it.

For example, a few weeks ago this guy I met was an affiliate of a poker website so he decided to try the application idea which allowed him to incorporate his business and business idea into the application. This got people interested and “hooked” into what he was marketing, which in turn made people want to go to the website and find out more! This is what you want! The “reach” that I was speaking about before has to do with all the people that belong to these websites and the Internet Marketing options available to you. These people come from all walks of life, all ages, all ethnic groups, and they all are on these sites for different reasons. But just like you, their reason also has to do with “networking” with other members. If you have even a hundred “friends” on a site like Myspace I can absolutely guarantee that each one does something different, is looking for something different, and are from different places across the world. This is what I love about Internet marketing, even though we are in a financial bind right now with our country, a lot of other countries aren’t having any effects whatsoever.

This allows for you the business person to reach out to these countries and these people which could very well result in a lot of money making opportunities! Even if you gave the Social Networking option a try for a few months, I have no doubt that you would see a leap in profits. In a world such as this any profit is a good profit. But a profit that is efficiently maintained through use of Social Network marketing could just be the golden opportunity you have always been looking for! This is something easy to do that anyone can accomplish. Mistakes are meant to be made as long as you learn from them then it was all worth it. Try asking some of your marketing buddies about the ads or “scripts” you are posting this also gives you a good idea of where you are going wrong or right and don’t be afraid to be critiqued. I don’t know about you but, I would rather have personal friends critique me and make more money than for them to spare my feelings and live mediocre! Live the life you were meant to live, try out Social Network marketing the next time you need to try a new marketing option.