"In the technology industry, change is a constant so it feels like there is always a gun to your head...You quickly learn you have to either adapt or die." Marc Andreessen

"A handful of men have become very rich by paying attention to details most others ignored." Henry Ford

"As we get older and more experienced, we overestimate the accuracy of our judgments..." Malcolm Gladwell

Today's image: drama queen 2 by ash.g Wonderful. Thanks for sharing.

Word on the tweet
(It smells like money)

Social media: some lessons learned over the months of presenting my brief. Big and small ventures are making money using creative social media strategies. Today we note two firms using Twitter to generate business.

On Twitter, Dell Outlet has 967,871 followers (@DellOutlet). Naked Pizza has 5,329 followers (@NAKEDpizza). Dell does business worldwide. Naked Pizza is a one-location enterprise in New Orleans. Both have developed approaches to effectively monetize Twitter.


As reported in Ad Age (Twitter Proves Its Worth as a Killer App for Local Business by Abbey Klaassen), in a test run on April 23rd, "an exclusive-to-Twitter promotion brought in 15% of the day's business."

Naked Pizza is micro-targeting. They're marketing to people within a three-mile radius of their shop. As shown in the photo at left, they have put up a billboard featuring the Twitter logo with the line "Follow us for specials" and their Twitter handle. This new creative replaced their previous, more conventional, "call for delivery" message.

A second Twitter-only promotion ran on May 29th asking customers to mention Twitter when ordering. That promotion set an overall one-day sales record. "68.6% of total dollar sales came from customers who said 'I'm calling from Twitter.' (Pizza by tweet by Richard Slawsky)

Stay tuned. The little outfit that promises the "World's Healthiest Pizza" and is devoted to creating "Pizza 2.0" may be going national. They enjoy the good fortune of having net savvy Mark Cuban as one of their investors.

We go from the single DMA Mom-and-Pop to the successful global brand that is Dell Computers. The cool kids at Dell Outlet are making millions on Twitter. By offering Twitter-exclusive deals and deep linking to coupons, Dell is able to track traffic and sales originating via Twitter. As of this writing, Dell has attributed over three million dollars in sales to their DellOutlet Twitter channel. (See this earlier article on Mashable, Making Millions via Twitter by Ben Parr)

There's no good reason why you should not be using your digital assets, including social media, to generate business. A media client we work with is in the process of a major site makeover. They have replaced their web site with a single splash page containing a link to their Twitter page. Twitter has become their primary web communications channel. Not surprisingly they are gaining followers daily. Most important, they have conducted several very successful Twitter-only promotions that are leading them to wonder "Why didn't our expensive web site produce these kind of results?" Good question. What exactly are you doing to build your business on Twitter?

Extra credit: 62 Ways to Use Twitter for Business by Meryl Evans, Web Worker Daily.

Good stuff: Direct from the Twitter gang - Twitter 101 for Business - A Special Guide.

P L A Y

Getting truly serious about your Twitter (and any of the other social media) starts with getting totally serious about that four letter word.

Mind the words of John Cleese "If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play."

Read about the amazing power of play: play. How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown, M.D. (Amzn info)

We're all making this stuff up as we go forward

(What's important is you're in the game, your team is playing. As Woody Allen famously said "Eighty percent of success is showing up.")

P.S. for broadcasters. Helping your clients get the best return from their social media initiatives begins with leading by example(s).

P.S.S. Please read this, study this, share this, discuss this > I now pronounce you monetized: A YouTube video case study, here. Related parody: JK Divorce Entrance Dance (natch).

Bonus: The Malcolm Gladwell quote used at the top of today's post was taken from his recent writing in The New Yorker - Cocksure. Banks, battles, and the psychology of overconfidence. It's a good read which you may find here.

Wayback bonus: Remembering Milwaukee rock radio in the 1980s. Sometimes floods are good by radio programming and marketing ace Lee Arnold. (July 2006), here.

Danna Walker, Ph.D. The Seven Laws of Journalism - This Semester 1. Journalism isn't dead 2. Money counts 3. Grow a pair 4. Life is hard (so deal with it) 5. You're a story factory 6. Use technology as a means to an end 7. Ok, the whole democracy thing (sorry).

Detritus: Number of times my talk on social media has been given - 26. Average rating (1-5) = 4.84 Average rating (1-10) = 9.23 Best comment (five scale) - "Can I give this a ten? WOW!!!...killer content...lots of solid very practical take away" Worst comment (five scale) - "Deserves a zero or maybe a minus 5...social media sucks way too much time and attention...the worst kind of fad media crap. Facebook will be gone by next year. Hello, Friendster, DUH...Next!...this was total waste of time." My favorite so far "The station kicking our butt at 11 could give a rats ass about Twitter or Facebook...110% of their energy is laser focused on crushing nightside not wasting time on stupid web junk or mobile app trash" (FYI - the station leading at 11 dominates both Facebook and Twitter among broadcasters in their metro, they also happen to have a pretty cool site given they are using an O&O template)