Twitter trends apart, Twitter itself was sort of trending in our news feeds here today, with as many as four or five news stories on it. The following three provided an interesting mix of news on Twitter being used in third party marketing moves. They also in a way shed light on how Twitter (and perhaps similar social media products) might begin to get integrated in advertising and marketing efforts in future.
Tata Sky and Media2Win Launch a Twitter Enabled Advertising Banner
Afaqs, today carried an interesting piece on how Media2Win developed an ad banner which went live on MSN India, to promote Tata Sky DTH’s new active service. The interesting part of course is that the banner is connected to two functioning Twitter accounts at the back end and itself leads to a microsite which is sort of an archive for the tweets sent and received using the banner. Read the entire article here, to get an idea on how exactly the banner functioned.
I find this interesting not only because it is a little different in terms of how Twitter is used, but because it also becomes case of the conversational advertising I had blogged long back. Though personally I didn’t find the ad engaging (and also whether it is the right way to humanize the brands) I am sure a lot of MSN users might have been intrigued and a lot more brand aware of Tata Sky Actve. A new beginning for banners is this, one away from click to one towards conversations?
Forbes Launches Twinterviews
In an announcement in which they themselves called the effort Twinterviews, Forbes plans to use Twitter to interview Ravi Bajaj to kick of a new series of interviews.
According to Afaqs, “In an informal but public experiment, Mr Bajaj will chat with Forbes India’s editorial team via the very popular Twitter interface. Bajaj Auto already has a presence on Twitter (@bajajauto), but Mr Bajaj will chat via his own newly-created Twitter handle, @motorcycleyogi, and Forbes India will speak through @forbes_india.”
The interview will cover Yoga, Motorcycles and the Business of Brands. The chat will be live, and open to all, on 11th Dec ’09, 1:30 pm to 2.00 pm (IST). The chat will of course also include questions from users. Interestingly Forbes have also opened avenues on Linkedin and Facebook (Discussion Threads on Groups) for people to participate in and ask questions and not just through Twitter.
I think this is an excellent way to build buzz and branding for Forbes which is new in India, as well as to send more traffic to in.com (Forbes India is on business.in.com) if not direct sales of Forbes magazine which also is a strong possibility. The fact that multiple accounts will be participating will garner enough scope for the talks to travel across Twitter streams thus gaining buzz. And it also gives an excellent online prelude that readers can later relate to, just like they can relate to the magazine interview before participating on the chat.
However, it also seems at the same time more of ‘Me too on Twitter’ kind of step, which usually doesn’t find many takers.
Yahoo Integrates Twitter to Its Search
In another news, Gigaom reports that Yahoo has integrated Twitter Updates to the bottom of their search results on topics that they deem ‘buzzing’. It is still different from the integration that Bing and Google had with twitter which was to access Twitter ‘Firehose’. In fact Yahoo’s integration doesn’t even make it real time and in their own statement have said the tweets might be minutes or hours older.
Perhaps with Microsoft and Yahoo’s search deal already in place, Yahoo didn’t quite need to cut a separate deal with Twitter which was paid for by MS and Google. And this can also be a test bed for insights into better integration of real time data from Twitter if and when it happens.
