trendpreneur

I like The Big Bang Theory, identify closely with the characters and setting, and have even lived with real physicists (oh my) so can attest to its truth in various ways. So it was remarkably cool to stumble across @sheldoncooper and friends tweeting about their lives, entirely in-character and entirely well done. I also recently saw that the paragon of schoolboy charm Molesworth had found his way on to the platform (chiz chiz).

This tickles all my spidey-senses about ARGs, improv, the blurring of fiction and reality, and how easy it is to be someone else on the Internet. Still, if toasters and plants and ovens can tweet, why not characters? It’s just a new tool in the arsenal of mixed-media marketing, of sucking people into your world, be it via a miniseries or games or interactive fiction. Old-school (ha!) ARGs tended to have a blog as the main point of contact between the protagonist/’eyes’ of the story, and the audience, precisely because blogs were easy to concoct. Taking that on to social networks is an obvious step, and content-experiments like Dinner_Guest are emerging to challenge what we think is real.

Keeping up a Twitter account in-character probably isn’t too hard in and of itself, but when viewed as part of a larger story — such as an ARG or other interactive fiction arc — I imagine it must be pretty exhausting. It’s basically constant improvisation; to truly seem real, you need to tweet like a real person, which means you can’t just tweet from 9 to 9.30 AM and have that done for the day. I think there’s some crossover here, as well, with brand identity and trust, and maintaining a ‘face’ to a corporate, and co-tweeting consistently… Where does the real user begin and the brand stop? Where do the fictional character’s tastes start reflecting the author’s?

I’m unsurprised to see there’s already been attempts at a Twitter ARG, but this platform has such potential for the form that’s as yet unrealised; there’s this wonderful ready, willing, participatory audience who are aware of each other without any need to set up forums or wikis. Oh yes, there’s definitely oodles of possibility here. I can’t wait to see what happens with it.

An interesting example of the boundaries between spam and promotion: #moonfruit. By tweeting this hashtag, Twitterers are entered into a daily prize draw to win a Macbook Pro. Mashable thinks they’re doing this right (compared to other failed tweet-about-us campaigns).

What are the key ingredients for success?

1. Give away something that makes people froth at the mouth. (Apple products tend to have this effect.)
2. Encourage multiple tweets, over time, to ensure constant visibility among trending topics (Daily draw only uses the previous day’s tweets, so people have to keep tweeting to win.)
3. Have visible, happy, real, winners.

Yet this has annoyed people, as it’s encouraged a flurry of spammy messages – leading to the question ‘will he who spams most win?’. Is the draw normalised? Does it take into account multiple accounts, or syndicates? There are so many ways to game something like this, it’s fortunate it’s only a 10-day promotion.

Will it leave a nasty taste in some people’s mouths? Undoubtedly. But it’s certainly got Twitter talking about Moonfruit. Is there no such thing as bad publicity? Sentiment classification, or other filtering, might help us understand what people think about Moonfruit – or whether they just want to win a laptop. (Almost undoubtedly the latter, no?) But when you’re just after volume, does the content matter?

Yesterday I had the mixed pleasure of getting up at the crack of dawn to head to Aberdeen for my third NESTA Starter for 6 workshop. S46, as it’s affectionately known, is a scheme whereby aspiring creative and technology entrepreneurs get some solid hands-on training in the various skills needed to run a successful business.

This month’s session was on marketing, run by two seasoned professionals from The Value Innovators. Obviously defining and then approaching your target market in the right way is crucial to a young business’s success, as startups rarely have the cash or even the time to absorb wasted marketing efforts.

The session focused on four key aspects of marketing: product, customers, promotion and PR.
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This article on talking to your target customers has floated across my radar multiple times in the last few days, so it’s only fair I blog it here.

The general premise is that it’s easy to find people to talk to about your product. By offering rewards and collecting basic information, you can get a whole load of people who are actually quite keen to speak to you, and filter them for relevance.

I especially like the concept from the point of view of firing out a survey and some AdWords links, and ending up with in-depth conversations about your product, possibly even lasting relationships. The potential customers will be in your debt thanks to the gift certificate, and presumably very open to early-bird offers when you launch the product.

Obviously people could game the system somewhat, aiming for the $20 gift voucher and telling you what they think you want to hear, but careful filtering and good questioning should hopefully stop this from happening. Good stuff.

It’s funny when something you take for granted starts seeping around to less, er, short-sighted parts of the world. We’ve all long thought social media was the future of marketing, right? But when the SF Chronicle (admittedly, possibly a more tech-focused paper than the Worthing Herald) gets the basic ideas right, it’s a sign that things are really getting mainstream.

Firms are learning that using the various forms of new media can establish a direct dialogue with customers about products or services. That approach can generate buzz, which can be as effective as an expensive advertising campaign or traditional media coverage.

The ‘net is one big conversation, and it looks like people are finally getting the hang of taking part.