The World Cup social media kit

The very best social media tools for getting the most out of the 2010 World Cup

When the World Cup rolled into Germany in 2006, YouTube was in its infancy, the iPhone didn’t exist and no one knew what a Twitter was. Things have changed a bit these past few years. 

Starting today, we will witness the crashing together of two behemoths: the world’s grandest sporting event and the world’s vast social networks. Prepare to have your Facebook, Twitter and every other kind of feed experience a noticeable shift in focus for the next three weeks as every football fan gets the chance to become a global sports reporter without leaving their living room.

There are loads of options for following the 64 games in painstaking detail, but we’ve sorted through them all and put together the top tools that deliver everything you need. 

Mobile: The ESPN World Cup App

There are lots of great apps dedicated to the World Cup, but ESPN’s is the cream of the crop and the only one you really need. You’ve got the full schedule, you can select which teams you want to follow to stay updated on breaking news, and stats and bios of every player for every team. You can even get a history lesson in the major events of tournaments past and interact with other fans by posting comments from within the app. If you’re willing to dole out $8, you gain access to radio broadcasts of every game, letting you follow matches no matter what you’re pretending to do at work. And to think a few years ago I was happy with cutting tournament brackets out of the newspaper. 

Twitter: The official World Cup aggregator 

Sure you can try to follow cluttered, hectic hashtags (like #wc2010 or #worldcup), but Twitter has done you a favor and created a World Cup headquarters themselves. They’ve done a great job of it, too. On the homepage, you’ve got a flow of the top tweets, which is superior to hashtags because it doesn’t just pull in the latest World Cup tweets, but uses an algorithm to select the most interesting ones. You can also see what matches are coming up and jump to a page for tweets about each particular game where you can easily follow and join in the banter. On the flip slide, the constant flow of information on Twitter is guaranteed to contain spoilers, so if you’re recording games to watch later, it’s probably best to abandon Twitter for a while. 

Facebook: The Visa Match Planner 

Visa has put together a great solution for following your favorite teams via Facebook. When you choose to follow teams and matches, you can invite friends to an event page where your customized group shares comments and media. And of course you’ve got the full day-by-day schedule with live updates, as well as a video of the “worldwide goal cheer.” As an expat the event function is particularly appealing, as it’s a great way for me to root for the (former) home team with friends despite the distance. 

Fantasy tournament: FIFA World Cup Fantasy

When they aren’t busy filing ridiculous lawsuits, FIFA (sponsored by McDonalds) is running one of the best fantasy tournaments. You’ve got 140 credits in the bank and all the players in the tournament to choose from. Put your squad together and compete for your piece of the glory. 

Bonus! The World Cup Trivia Challenge App 

Do a little competing of your own with this fun football trivia app. In a creative twist on the regular old trivia contest, with this app you take the role of a team on the road to World Cup glory, advancing as you get questions right. It’s the perfect way to overcome halftime boredom and learn a thing or two about the tournament at the same time. 

If you’ve got any other favorites that you’re horrified I missed, give a shout below. 

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.

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Oil spill catharsis: How Twitter has been good for BP

We are emotional creatures. Like it or not, raw emotion affects how we judge things intellectually. Businesses and admen have known and played on this since well before the days of Don Draper. With social media, our emotions are played on in a whole different way when it comes to dealing with corporate image issues. Letting people vent their spleen through channels like Twitter to a large degree defuses people’s anger and bitterness. After all, haven’t you ever been upset and felt better just by talking about the problem? The problem doesn’t go anywhere, but the talking lets off most of the steam.

I’ve been seeing this happen with British Petroleum (BP) on Twitter. If you’re on Twitter, you’ve probably heard of BPGlobalPR. Nope, that isn’t BP’s official PR presence on Twitter, it’s a satirical account started by one enterprising comedian shortly after the gushing oil pipeline catastrophe struck. 

The Tweeter calls himself Terry and has chosen to remain anonymous despite being contacted by major news outlets who want the inside scoop on how this rogue account has chalked up 140,000 followers. Compare that to the just 12,000 of the real BP account, which actually does provide regular informative updates on the crisis. If you add up the retweets and news stories, the scathing tweets by the fake BP representative have reached millions of people eager to point and laugh at the oil giant. 

Though secretive about his identity, the LA Times did get a quote from “Terry,” all the while refusing to break character, about why he’s doing this: "Companies screw up and then they hire folks like me to come in to make it look like they're doing something while they figure out how to make money again," the fake public relations representative wrote. "BP is doing everything we can to save our reputation and hopefully salvage some oil out of all this. We're making a ton of shirts and commercials about how we care, and I cleaned an ugly bird yesterday." For more great quotes, check out the interview with “Terry” on ABC News (never mind the scary monster voice).

Yes, it is an inspiring case of how social media lets a regular Joe go toe-to-toe with a mega-corporation. It’s hardly surprising that satire is successful on Twitter, it’s easier to pack a lot of sting into 140 characters than it is genuine dialogue or detailed explanation. But despite it being a fitting way to stick it to the man, BP may be the one benefiting the most from this Twitter parody. Don’t you feel less angry and anxious to do something after having a laugh at the jokes? It is still an infuriating travesty, but the heated malice toward BP is somewhat tempered, they become more bumbling than evil. BP could well have filed a complaint with Twitter, but they must have realized that would only create more negative PR and instead let people blow off steam. It may be the one good call BP has made in all of this.

Regardless of whether it’s disarming us or not (on the plus side, Terry is selling oil spill T-shirts and giving the proceeds to charity), some of the tweets are just great jokes. Here are my 5 favorite tweets from the rogue BP Twitter account so far:

 

 
 

 
What effect do you see the mock BP Twitter account having? Let us know below. 

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.

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Amazing augmented reality campaigns

Recent efforts show that marketing success with this new tech is well within reach

The challenge of using new technology in marketing is numbing yourself to the novelty of it and finding a genuinely good idea. And though most fail, a few succeed brilliantly. We’ve been looking to use augmented reality in an upcoming project and did some research to see what has already been done. What we found were some amazing applications that solve the target’s needs, while wowing them with shiny things at the same time.

Here are the best campaigns we’ve come across and why they were a success. Maybe they’ll inspire you to come up with some brilliant applications of your own that you didn’t even realize were possible. 

Slap a virtual watch on your wrist
So you’re thinking of dropping a chunk of change on a new watch, but not quite convinced it will look as dashing on your wrist as you imagine. Why not try on a digital model first? Tissot is betting you’ll want to take their new range for a test drive. It starts with a paper watch you cut out from their magazine ads (you can also download it from the site). You put the paper watch around your wrist, go to the Tissot site to download the software and hold it up to your webcam. You then see a 3D model wrapped around your wrist. You can cycle through the new range and even test out some the watches’ features. It’s extremely cool, has drawn loads of media attention and fills the need of potential buyers to try out a watch before buying beautifully.

The dude is unsettlingly devoid of emotion, but the watch is nifty
 

Take a BMW for a spin on your desktop (the wooden one)
They could have just gone with creating a nifty 3D pop-up model (like Mini did), but for the Z4, BMW kicked it up a notch and created art. Or rather, they let you create art. Using a simple printout, a Z4 pops onto your desk and you can drive it around, leaving colorful tire tracks in your wake. When your street art is complete, you can save and share it via YouTube or Facebook with one click, thus expanding the campaign's footprint and making it spread organically simply by virtue of being fun and drawing fans more intimately into the BMW experience. 

Such pretty donuts. Mmmmm....donuts.
 

Explore the 3D world on your tongue
Since augmented reality springs to life just by using a simple pattern, you can slip it into almost anything. Even the tongue of your shoe. Adidas has created a 3D city (complete with the Death Star) that springs to life when you go to their website and hold the shoe up to your webcam. You can then navigate the city and play games using the shoe as a controller. It’s pretty dang cool and adds a unique selling point for their sneakers in an overcrowded market. The brilliance of the idea is that it adds a whole new digital dimension into the product itself, instead of creating a one-off gimmick that’s glanced at and forgotten. This way, the 3D world is always on the tip of your tongue. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. 

3D city! Storm troopers! Lasers! Overstimulation!
 

Enroll in alien police academy  
The film District 9 used a highly interactive augmented reality app to spread awareness and deepen fans’ experience of the sci-fi world. By visiting the website for Multi National United, the fictional government organization in charge of policing Earth’s alien inhabitants, you can go through an augmented reality training simulation on how to deal with day-to-day tasks, like non-human arrest and shooting at monsters. The campaign is a clever take on the film world and adds depth to the story, increasing viewers immersion and extending engagement beyond the cinema. 

Working for the man is fun when they give you a machine gun.

Get your own mud soccer cheerleader 
In the most ambitious campaign I came across, UK brand Dairy Crest have set up an elaborate mud soccer contest. In order to win a slot for you and 5 friends in the Frijj Swamp Soccer World Cup 2010, complete with your own Swamp Soccerettes cheering your team on, users hold up a Frijj bottle in front of their webcam to enter a real-time environment. Oh, and a swamp soccerette crawls out of the bottle and does a cheer for you. The campaign cleverly capitalizes on the World Cup fever among its target and encourages them to get involved in a footie tournament of their own while their blood is boiling for some action. Plus, it’s so quirky you can’t resist seeking out more info to see if it’s real. 

The connection between mud and milk is left mysteriously unsaid
 

Inspired yet? If so, check out this article for some great practical tips on creating an augmented reality campaign before you get started. And if you’ve seen any other great augmented reality campaigns, share them in the comments section below.

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.

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Blog tips: Lessons learned from our first 100 posts

We have officially crossed over into adulthood (well, adolescence anyway) with our blog post total hitting triple digits with this very post. 

Our first 100 posts have been a constant learning experience. Reflecting back on our ups and downs, hindsight reveals what has and hasn’t worked for us in connecting with web surfers. Here are 5 blogging tips for creating relevant content and getting people to read it. 

Exploit unexpected traffic sources
We’ve had a couple of surprisingly effective sources that almost always give us a slew of hits with each post. One of these is StumbleUpon, which by itself has delivered hundreds of hits within a few hours of publishing posts. We’re still not sure why some posts take off while others fizzle, but consistently working with StumbleUpon has paid off, and we’ve had a similar experience with Reddit. We’ve also gotten consistent search engine traffic from unexpected keywords. Track closely where readers are coming from and play up what’s working.

Stay on top of current events
This is pretty obvious, but don’t underestimate just how much traffic trending topics can generate. Your blog’s focus may not be on breaking news (ours isn’t), but big things will happen every now and then in your field and it’s a good idea to capitalize on them. Some of our biggest traffic days were thanks to quick responses to breaking events (like the launch of Apple’s iPad) thus adding to our overall reader base. Just keep in mind how short the window is on these topics – it may only be a day or two. The internet has a very short attention span.

Don’t neglect SEO for your blog
With their frequently updated content and high flexibility, blogs are SEO gold mines. You can easily write posts on the fly about hot topics that are generating hoards of searches, you have a lot of great content to share with others to get in-links and have an ideal place to create in-links to your other web properties or sites you want to share link power with. All theses things can be difficult to manage with your main website, especially if its content is pretty locked in place. If you don’t have a blog, SEO is a great reason to start one.

Make yourself useful
Advice lists have been a big hit for us. Sure, breaking news and offering opinions on topics our readers care about has gotten surges of traffic, but those posts haven’t had the engagement or consistent performance of our specific advice pieces. A mixture of both is ideal as you don’t want to get monotonous, but always bear in mind people have limited time to surf blogs and will only stop to read something they know will give them something back for their time. Be highly critical in your editorial process. 

Create a schedule and stick to it
The frequency of your posts is vital for both search engine ranking and keeping your blog top of mind in readers. It may seem against the nature of a blog to create a rigid structure for posting, but for all you busy bees it’s probably the only realistic way to make sure you’ve got content going up on a regular basis over the long term. We couldn’t have kept on as consistently as we have without giving ourselves hard deadlines. 

Check back to bask in the wisdom we’ve gained in our 1,000th post special. Shouldn’t take too long. To commemorate our 100 post landmark, here’s a list of our 5 most popular articles so far. Check out the good stuff you may have missed.

1. How to create your own iPhone app

2. The top 5 Twitter apps for Android

3. How to keep your business going when a volcano erupts


4. Top admen to follow on Twitter

5. Attack of the disgruntled employee

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.

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The best use of keywords is not SEO

Supercharging your site with keywords isn’t nearly as effective as building it around them from the ground up

Working on several SEO projects here at The Duffy Agency, I’ve come to realize keyword research has an even better use than optimizing a site for search engines – it should guide the entire focus of a site from day one.

Us SEO geeks usually start projects by doing some intense keyword research to make sure we’re optimizing an existing site for the search phrases with the greatest potential. This does help your content get found by a whole lot more people, but your chance to reach the masses may already be out of reach.

If you want to build a massively successful website in today’s overcrowded cyberspace, you need a cunning strategy. Keyword research is your secret weapon in crafting a strategy to give you a leg up on the competition. Without this research, you’re leaving your fate up to wishful thinking, hoping that your target is already searching for exactly what you’re creating and that you can steal traffic from competitors. But by taking a close look at what your target is searching for, you can tailor your content so that it gets placed where millions of targeted individuals are looking for it. But there's a catch: your site’s core content might not end up being what you had planned.

I can sense your skepticism. After all, if you want to sell bikinis, why should you go and make a website about swimming, workout tips and dieting instead of simply setting up an optimized webshop?

Because there aren’t many people searching for bikinis. Moreover, your webshop would be competing against every other company in the category, and the best SEO in the world won’t put you in front of the global giants. On top of that, you’ll only be fighting for the people typing “bikini” into search engines.

When you do the research, you see that most people interested in upgrading their beach-look are between 13 and 40, they work out, they dream about vacations in the Bahamas, and even though they want your product, most of them never search for it

. But they are searching for pictures of beaches, reading blogs about working out and trying out diets to lose a couple of pounds before bikini season. In other words, you discover swimwear is actually a small part of a bigger need your customers are trying to satisfy.

So instead of creating the website www.wesellswimwear.com you create www.getreadyforthebeach.com.

And instead of targeting the keywords "swimwear," "bikinis" and "bathing suits," which are being intensely fought over by a slew of competitors, you use "beach," "vacation," "work out" and "diet tips," since they get millions more hits and are less contested by the competition. 

There’s still competition to deal with, but you won’t be competing against other webshops struggling for their piece of a small audience. You’ll attract customers from a huge group of people who want your product, even if they aren’t looking for it directly. And you’ll still have pages on your site devoted to your webshop where you can fight for a place on the first “bikini” search results page.

The moral of this little hypothetical tale is that keyword research shows you what content your audience is out there looking for, and it’s likely not what you’re selling, whether it be a product, service or obscure amusement. You can’t do a whole lot with that information after your website is up, so doing the research in the beginning and engineering your site to give your target exactly what they want, where they’re looking for it, will lead to far greater results on search engines and higher traffic in general. Maybe a site that is all about you is exactly what you need, but you won’t know without the research. And if you don’t do it until after you’ve poured your time and money into making a site, your golden opportunity may have passed you by.

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Network

The Duffy Agency is part of the Transworld Advertising Agency Network (TAAN). It is a network of carefully selected independent advertising agencies that collaborate on multi-national projects. TAAN is also affiliated with the San Jose Network, creating a combined total of 65 agencies that span every continent. Below you'll find the name of each member agency and a link to their website to learn more. 

TAAN
Global agency network

A. Clodi & Partner 
Ad agency Salzburg

Access & Associates 
Ad agency Bangkok

Aloysius Butler & Clark
Ad agency Wilmington

Aptum
Ad agency Kristiansand

Ascendant
Ad agency Richmond, UK

CAP
Ad agency Sarasota

Capelli Miles [spring]
Ad agency Eugene

CCAA International 
Ad agency Hong Kong

Charleston|Orwig
Ad agency Hartland

COMED
Ad agency Luxembourg

DigitalDay
Ad agency Akron

ENNEMM
Ad agency Reykjavik

Francesco Miscioscia
Ad agency Rome

Freebairn and Company
Ad agency Atlanta

Friends Advertising and Communications
Ad agency Kuala Lumpur

Frontpage Advertising
Ad agency Lagos

Hult Fritz Matuszak
Ad agency Peoria

Ilancilik Reklam
Ad agency Istanbul

ITB Advertising
Ad agency Kiev

Kiesewetter
Ad agency Freiburg

Krome Communications
Ad agency Pittsburgh

Lab Comunicaciones
Ad agency Mexico City

Lemon Studio
Ad agency Bucuresti

Levy McCallum
Ad agency Glasgow

LOUD
Ad agency Sydney

Mainostoimisto Linnurata Oy
Ad agency Helsinki

Maricich Brand Communications
Ad agency Irvine

Media Cross
Ad agency St Louis

Mobium Creative Group
Ad agency Chicago

Mr Joe
Ad agency Paris

MSTF Partners
Ad agency Lisbon

Network Advertising
Ad agency Mumbai

Opinion Valley
Ad agency Paris

OpusMultipla
Ad agency Curitiba

Oskar Wegner
Ad agency Szczecin

Pure
Ad agency Columbia

SCA
Ad agency Buenos Aires

Tasku
Ad agency Helsinki

The Big Idea
Ad agency Dubai

The Duffy Agency
Ad agency Malmö/Boston

THE PARTNER
Ad agency Barcelona

Travers Collins & Company
Ad agency Buffalo

Tropical Communications
Ad agency Singapore

Vandekerckhove & Devos
Ad agency Gent

Visetas
Ad agency Kaunas

X-ingredient
Ad agency Amsterdam

The San Jose Network
International agency network

A2-20
Ad agency Montevideo

Advertising and Marketing Limited
Ad agency Kingston

Cimple Publicidad
Ad agency Santo Domingo

Equity International
Ad agency Guatemala

ERC Integrated Communications
Ad agency Puerto Rico

Fältman & Malmén
Ad agency Stockholm

Giacometti & Associados
Ad agency Brazil

Grupo de Comunicacion La Argolla
Ad agency Costa Rica

Harold Zea & Asociados
Ad agency Colombia

Hispanic Group
Ad agency Miami

Huella Publicidad
Ad agency Managua

La Grant Communications
Ad agency Los Angeles

Origen SA de CV
Ad agency El Salvador

Prime Access Inc.
Ad agency New York

Qualitat
Ad agency Bogota

Rila Publicidad
Ad agency Panama

The San Jose Group
Ad agency Chicago

Turu Publicidad
Ad agency Paraguay

Vertice Comunicacion
Ad agency Mexico

Vistacom Comunicacion & Marketing
Ad agency Lima

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Please don’t follow me

How to work with (not around) Twitter’s 2,000 follow limit

Spammers have nested in Twitter’s dark underbelly since its earliest days. Fully aware of this, Twitter imposes a limit to the number of people you can follow all at once to hinder spam accounts and bots. Since that limit is 2,000 people, it’s not much of a hindrance to your average user. But for those of us trying to connect to as many relevant people as possible through Twitter, it can be a bother.

I’m going to offer some advice for cracking the 2,000 following limit, but first let’s consider why you need more than 2,000 people sending you 140 character messages to begin with.

This is about 2,000 people. Now imagine them all shouting at you. That's what following 2,000 people is like.

 

The line between spam and interesting content is thinner than you think

Honestly take a look at where you fall on the spam spectrum. We think of spam as bots, or companies pushing their offer into the world without restraint, but if you’re bulk following people you aren’t really interested in, or spending far more time shouting than listening, the Twitterverse doesn’t consider you much better than a bot. Almost all of us are guilty of this to some degree. If you’re swaying too far toward the spammer end of the spectrum, you should rethink how you use Twitter before you start strategizing how to get more followers. 

Who really needs to follow 2,000+ people? 

You could argue that no one does, because no one can actually sustain a conversation with that many people at once. Refining your list to a smaller network you interact with daily may be more beneficial than having 1 million people auto-follow you back who aren’t listening. Moreover, how many tweets do you have time to keep up with? If the answer is not nearly enough to stay up to speed on your Twitter stream, consider what the actual benefit of following more people is. That said, there are thousands of interesting people out there (here's how to find them) and if you’re following them for the right reasons, expanding your network can be a good idea. The whole point of Twitter is, after all, making new connections with interesting people. 

Ok, I get it, you still want to follow more people

2,000 isn’t the absolute limit, it’s actually based on a ratio – once you get close to 2,000 followers, you’re only allowed to follow 10% more people than are following you. If you aren’t close to having that many followers, unfollowing people is the obvious way to open up spots for new tweeple. People you should stop following are the ones who are either not contributing anything interesting or who have more or less abandoned their accounts. Here you can find tools to bulk unfollow people, but I wouldn’t recommend getting rid of people just because they didn’t follow you back - they may in fact be your most relevant follows. And you can get them to follow you back by listening to what they say and responding.

Focusing on generating great content and making sure it’s found will help you get more followers organically, and as such raise your follow limit. Using hashtags is a great way to help others with the same interests find you, as is promoting your account through your other social media assets like Facebook and LinkedIn, along with email sigs and business cards.

Do NOT auto-follow people back

This habit severely undermines the value of your Twitter stream and fills up your limit with fluff. There are tons of people bulk following others to try and boost their numbers with no intention of listening to anyone, including you. Following back can be difficult to resist as people can get snippy if you don’t. I’ve been publicly called out for not following someone back, and was forced to publicly state that I didn’t think they were very interesting. I was promptly unfollowed. I was perfectly ok with losing a follower, given that his main interest was fly fishing and, having never touched a rod, I had no insight to offer. So if you don’t share any of the same interests as me, please don’t follow me, neither of us will get anything out of it. Even if it makes our numbers look good.

The 2,000 follow limit is there for good reason. When you hit it, you should start refining your list, not finding ways to subvert the system. After all, 1 follower who really cares what you have to say is worth 2,000 who are just padding their numbers. 

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.

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The social media travel kit

Summertime is finally just about here, so it’s time to start planning your big annual getaway. For most of us, this means exploring new lands and leaving the daily grind in our dust. While it can be relaxing to pack up and leave town for a few weeks, it can also be stressful to feel like you’re going to fall out of the loop while you’re gone and like you can’t rely on the internets for all your problem solving needs. Thanks to social media, leaving your home doesn’t mean you can’t stay connected. Just like packing your suitcase with your clothes, toiletries, lotions, swimwear, sandals, etc, you’ll need a social media travel kit keep you connected and allow you get the most out of your vacation.

 

First, you’ll need a smartphone, iPad or mini-pc/netbook. You’re packing a lot of stuff to take with you, so why take a cumbersome laptop as well? Get a small, light-weight device that will allow you easy access to the internet and will allow you to upload photos. Mini-pc’s are a great way to get online when you’re on the go and quality models can be found for $200-300. 

If you’re like me, you have multiple websites you check every day to keep up with news, events, and in the case of vacation planning, recommended locations, restaurants and attractions. Instead of leaving all those bookmarks on your home computer, create a Del.icio.us account and you can check them from any device with internet access. 

Keep in touch with your friends and family and let them know what you’re up to through Facebook and Twitter. Since everyone you know is more than likely on Facebook and/or Twitter, it’s easy to arrange meet-ups if they’re in the area, and get recommendations from them on places to stay, eat and visit. This is an excellent way to get local advice on places to eat and sights to see that aren’t in the travel guides.

You often don’t know anyone in the places you’re visiting, so finding a great place to eat can be difficult. Fortunately Urbanspoon.com is a great user review restaurant site. You can find local places to eat through their website or their android or iPhone app, see how people rated the restaurant and how they critiqued it. 

TripIt allows you to plan out your entire vacation. You can add your flight, lodging and car rental information, plus add all the details of where you’ll be and how to get there, complete with maps and driving times. Even if you choose not to share the information through Facebook or Twitter, this is a great way to keep track of reservation numbers, costs and trip notes. 

Finally, Skype is the best free way to call people and even includes video calls. You can stay in touch with the people you left back home and make them jealous of the wonderful time you are having - without having to pay long distance or roaming fees.

This summer, leaving home for a vacation doesn’t mean you can’t stay informed or in touch with the people you care about or want to meet. Thanks to wifi networks and mobile devices, you can maximize your trip, stay in touch and best of all, get rid of those stupid maps.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.

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How an independent agency can reach 3.5 billion people

New network alliance creates a viable option to global advertising conglomerate – minus the baggage

One advertising agency by itself, even if it’s filled with some of the best and brightest in the industry, can’t give you global reach. That’s why so many companies turn to global network agencies (think Ogilvy, JWT, BBDO) despite the hefty price, inflexibility and bureaucracy that are often part of the package. But today many clients are discovering that when independent agencies around the globe work together in harmony, that independent creative shop around the corner turns into your brand’s gateway to brilliant global marketing, without all the baggage.  

This new independent solution provides more options to clients with global brands. Instead of having to choose between one global network agency or hand-picking individual agencies in every market, you can now go to an independent network to get centralized leadership with local expertise in one package. This strategy is becoming an increasingly popular one. 

Our goal has always been to be a lithe independent agency that can take on challenging international projects. That’s why we’re a member of the ad agency network TAAN. It allows us to partner with other top class independent agencies in markets around the world to take on multi-national campaigns. Since each agency is carefully selected and immersed in only its local market, with all of the unique nuances that entails, TAAN has been a godsend in making many of our projects successes for us and our clients. 

TAAN’s reach recently made a huge leap forward thanks to an alliance with the San Jose Network – the world’s premier Latin ad agency network serving global clients across North, Central and South America. The new alliance creates a network of independent ad agencies with combined coverage of 65 countries, 87 markets and 3.5 billion people. TAAN president Peter Gerristen said of the new partnership, “This alliance is truly a game-changer for today’s brands and will provide expertise, local knowledge and insight into economically important regions and cultures.”

Since it’s vital to meet face to face with our network partners to see what skills we can each add to projects, we bit the bullet and made the trip from perpetually overcast Sweden to the sunny shores of Miami. The meeting was the first gathering of the combined networks to establish relationships and get the ball rolling on some exciting new collaborations.

San Jose Network founder George L. San Jose with Sean Duffy (TAAN EU President, founder The Duffy Agency),  Rich Wahl (Managing Partner of The Duffy Agency Boston) and  Peter Gerristen (TAAN Global President) at the conference in Miami

The biggest impact the new alliance has for us is the added depth in Latin American markets. We can’t wait to dive into new projects that will take advantage of this expertise. 

With combined annual billings of $1.5 billion USD, this new independent constellation would easily rank in the world’s top 10 of Ad Agency Networks (combined billings were revised up from 1.1 billon since the alliance was announced in February, 2010).  “No matter how you look at it, that is a business entity to be reckoned with,” said Sean Duffy who, together with John Reisky, serves as president of  TAAN Europe. 

Despite their combined size, networks of independents retain a level of agility and adaptability that is valued by clients large and small, yet has proven difficult for the the WPP and Interpublic Groups of the world to copy. The failure of the global ad agency conglomerates to keep pace with the changes that have taken place in the market over the past decade is making networks like TAAN a more attractive option than traditional global agency network chains. We believe this trend will continue. 

Do you see the rise of independent networks shaping the future of the ad biz, or will the industry continue to be dominated by Sir Martin Sorrell and Michael Roth? 

Read more about the TAAN and San Jose Network alliance. 

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SEO and Twitter: How to get your page ranked

Adding search engine optimization to a website is as essential as good design and content. SEO is the cornerstone of making sure a website is found by search engines, which helps increase site traffic and authority. Most people are catching on to SEO these days, but they still don’t associate it with Twitter. Which is a shame because they’re missing an easy opportunity to increase their exposure. 

Twitter is highly indexed by Google and taking a few simple steps will help your Twitter profile appear on the first page of results when someone searches for you. Too often we’ve done research for clients and found that a company’s Twitter page doesn’t appear in the first few pages of a Google search. If that applies to you (go and check, we’ll wait), by making a few changes to your profile, you can boost your ranking.

Profile name - Picking a username is one of the most important things you can do. A username should either reflect your industry, a name you’re well known by or your company. This is how people will find your profile and associating your account with a name that is already associated with your industry will increase its value. Avoid dashes and try to keep the name as short as possible. 

Your website - Don’t bother adding “www” in front of your url. Twitter will add “http://” so the shorter you can keep your url the better. Twitter will only show the first 20 characters and the first 7 are pre-filled in. Just use the domainname.com. Avoid using url shorteners like Bit.ly or Tiny Url. 

Bio keywords - With only 160 characters allowed in your bio, don’t waste characters with words that don’t add to your value and have no search relevance. Your bio is a short introduction to who you are and will be displayed in the search results. It should tell people who you are, what you do and what you’ll tweet about.

Avatar - Most people don’t think about this, but Twitter doesn’t rename your profile photo like some sites do. By giving your profile photo a correct name, it will appear in search engine image results. This is important when it comes to making sure people are using the correct version of your logo or picture.

Use your account - Now that you’ve set up your account to maximize search engine results, use your account. The more active you are on Twitter, the higher Google and Bing will rank your profile in search results. This will lead to more people finding your profile, getting more followers and increasing your brand authority. 

After making these changes, let us know how it changed the search results for your Twitter profile.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.

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5 lessons Hollywood taught me about social media

Summer blockbuster season has kicked off with Iron Man 2 hauling in bucket loads of cash. Social media has been a big part of movie promotion this year, allowing film studios to get eager movie goers more engaged with their stories and characters than ever. Every campaign site I visited had a Facebook and Twitter account attached, so they aren't anything that will set a campaign apart any more. While most weren't anything to write home about, a few of the campaigns for this year’s big films have been downright brilliant, generating widespread buzz across the internet. As there are some great concepts in these campaigns, I decided to pick a few of them apart to see what the rest of us trying to market through social media could learn. Here are 5 examples of social media campaigns done right and what lessons there are to take away.

1. Toy Story 3 taught me to think laterally 
Beyond promoting Toy Story 3 directly, Pixar “leaked” bizarre retro TV spots for non-existent toys on YouTube. It was a brilliant move because it showed Pixar understood what gives a video viral appeal, making them feel like obscure, hilarious discoveries that you want to share with everyone you know. With millions of views on YouTube, articles written about the campaign on blogs and websites both big and small, and buzz stormed up on social media networks, Pixar showed us that you don’t have to say a word about yourself to get the internet talking about you.  

2. Iron Man 2 taught me to let fans become the hero 

This site easily took the longest to load (and it doesn’t appear to work in Chrome at all), but it was worth it when it did. Using an augmented reality app and your webcam, you can finally see yourself as Iron Man or War Machine. The app tracks where your head is (don’t ask me how) and places the Iron Man helmet over it, moving around as you move. You can also get an inside view of the helmet with all the futuristic interfaces Tony Stark uses in the movies. It’s a big kick for fans of the movie to see themselves as the hero, and there’s nothing that draws more attention than appealing to people’s vanity. If you can find a way to let your target become the star, it’ll earn you a lot of goodwill. 

 I. Am. Iron Man.

3. Shrek Forever After taught me if I let fans build their own content, they will happily share it 

The campaign site for Dreamworks’ 4th Shrek movie is stuffed with the usual content, but its build-an-ogre feature makes it a standout. It invites you to join the ogre resistance by creating your very own ugly green soldier. There’s actually quite a lot of options for customizing your ogre. The franchise lost my interest after the second film, but I still found it great fun to see what combinations of silly faces and fierce weapons I could come up with. It’s even made me a bit curious about what this resistance is and how it plays into the film. But the really brilliant part is that Dreamworks realized people were far more interested in sharing their own creations than someone else’s, so they gave them a way to make something highly customizable of their own that promoted their film at the same time. 

This is my Ogre. I call him Steve.

 

4. Jonah Hex taught me to plant teasers where the target will find them 

In support of the upcoming theatrical release of Jonah Hex, DC Comics and the WB have created a web series of animated motion-comics covering three new story arcs. I had never heard of Jonah Hex, but the motion-comics look kick ass and have gotten me intrigued enough to look into the film and ask my friends about it. The motion comics are available through Amazon, iTunes, Xbox Live and the Playstation Network – most of the places their target go to satisfy their entertainment cravings. By creating exclusive content to hook potential new fans, they’re generating a higher level of anticipation for the film by immersing people in the Jonah Hex universe. If you put the effort into creating great offshoot content, people will happily download and talk about it – even if they have to pay for it.

5. Despicable Me taught me if you’re just gonna do a campaign site, do it exceptionally well 
The best way to get people to share your content through social media is simply by giving them great content. Universal poured a whole lot of effort (and god knows how much money) into their campaign site for Despicable Me to give visitors much more than the usual, forgettable movie site. I usually hate it when a website has music playing in the background, but Despicable Me’s theme song is too much fun to find annoying. And that’s the crux of this whole site: things that are usually throwaways are done well enough to be endearing. Each section is presented nicely and has several options for sharing the content. The games are particularly slick. They’re based on classics but with amusing tweaks, e.g. when you play tic-tac-toe various landmarks pop up along with amusing soundbites. You even have an extra incentive to keep playing as winning games unlocks prizes, like desktop wallpapers. There isn’t a revolutionary idea in the site, but it certainly has me excited to see this film just by how much fun it is.

Those are just a few of the campaigns for this summer's big movies. Did we miss any of your favorites?  

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.

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5 Twitter apps for the iPad

With the impending international release of the iPad (May 28th) and over a million already sold in the US, the adoption of the platform is in full swing. And that of course means the new apps are flying fast – over 4,800 are available already. If you ask us, a smooth Twitter app plays a big part in the iPad’s usefulness. Unfortunately, you’ll have to pay for the majority of these apps. Of the Twitter apps we found, only one was free, but none was more than $5. These are the early days of iPad development and some of the apps clearly aren’t 100% there yet. With a few more revisions, all of these apps should be outstanding. As it stands now, they’re all pretty good solutions, but some have more problems than others.

TweetDeck for iPad (Price: free) - The transition to the iPad has been an easy one for the master of the desktop Twitter apps. All the features we love in the desktop app are available here including easy to navigate columns, multiple account support, photo sharing, and all the others we’ve come to rely on. It’s the best of the free Twitter apps.

Twitterific for iPad (Price: free; $4.99 for Pro account) - Twitterific Pro is the best iPad Twitter application we tried. The switch between portrait and landscape view is fluid, and even the free version has all the basics you need like being able to reply, re-tweet, DM and more. The $5 upgrade to Pro lets you add multiple Twitter accounts and remove the ads. It may not be free like Tweetdeck, but the small cost is worth it for the better functionality. 

 

Twitepad (Price: $1.99) - For $3 less than Twitterific and Twittelator, Twitepad gives you most of the same functionality: multiple Twitter accounts, multiple columns, bit.ly stats and instapaper support. But you get what you pay for as it’s a little buggy, which is the only thing that keeps us from strongly recommending it. They have fixed a few of the bugs but it needs another round or two before it’s as good a tool as its competitors.

TwitRocker (Price: $4.99) - TwitRocker is another great app that features all the bells and whistles you need. With bit.ly URL shortening, multiple account support, OAuth security, search functions, list imports and all the basics such as retweeting, direct messages, and following/unfollowing people, TwitRocker truly does rock Twitter for the iPad. It’s a solid choice, but if you’re going to pay $5 for your app we’d still recommend Twitterific. 

 Twittelator for iPad (Price: $4.99) - Coming in at the more expensive level, Twittelator is easy to navigate and has great customization options. But $5 is expensive for an app, so it better work. With slow load times, problems switching from landscape to portrait mode and missing some of the iPhone features, Twittelator isn’t quite worth the price tag. Give this one a pass until it goes through a couple of revisions to work out the kinks. Once it does, it has the potential to be a great app.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.

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State of the Union in Social Media

The 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report by Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner was released a couple of weeks ago. Stelzner interviewed 1,356 marketing professionals in order to understand how marketers are using social media to grow and promote their businesses. It confirms what many of us working in social media already knew, but also contained several surprises. 

A staggering 91% of the marketers surveyed say they are using social media for marketing purposes. That’s much higher than I think most people would have predicted. Sure, social media is hot right now, but many companies are reluctant to get started even if they feel they should. The common perception is that more B2C companies are using social media than B2B companies. It turns out that 79.5% of B2B companies use social media, with only 68.7% of their B2C counterparts on the bandwagon.

The majority of marketers are using social media 6 hours or more a week. This shows a growing number of businesses are investing their time in social media – and with great results. Over 73% of marketers using social media for over a year reported that it helped them close business, which is an increase of 12% over 2009. 

 

Additionally, businesses using social media saw the following results:

• An increase in their search engine rankings
• Greater exposure for their business
• Created new partnerships
• Generated qualified leads
• Reduced overall marketing expenses
• Increased website traffic

 

Naturally Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are the most used social media tools. Look to blogs and YouTube to make big strides in the coming year as many of the marketers surveyed planned to increase their usage. But the tools they really want to know more about are social bookmarking sites (i.e.; Delicious) and smartphone marketing. 

Social media is quickly becoming a marketing staple, which means your customers will be less and less forgiving if you don’t have a presence there, and potential customers may miss you altogether. If you aren’t developing a social media marketing plan this year, it will be harder to catch up. 

In our business, Facebook, Twitter and blogging have been instrumental in helping us make contacts and increase our footprint beyond what a small agency could normally create. But we’re always looking for innovative new ways to connect with people. What social media tools have you found particularly effective?

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.

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The top 5 Twitter apps for Android

The smartphone app battle has heated up with legitimate rivals to the iPhone hitting their stride. Apple’s App Store continues to overshadow the competition with downloads in the multiple billions, but Google’s Android Market has emerged with a strong collection of its own mobile apps, along with the advantage of having multiple mobile phone brands running the OS. With around 300 million downloads under its belt, Android Market is building up steam. 

Seeing that Android has a prominent place in the future of mobile devices, we picked up an HTC Desire to discover firsthand what it’s capable of. First order of business: finding the best Android app to run our Twitter accounts. What we found was there is no app that truly stands out as the best overall, but there are apps that excel at meeting specific needs. Below you’ll find 5 of the best apps out there and which type of Twitter user they best serve.

 

The Official Twitter App – For the user looking for basic functionality 
The official Twitter app is surprisingly bare bones, seeming to not even try to compete with the feature-rich apps from third party developers. But for basic functionality, it serves its purpose extremely well. Its interface is one the best looking of the apps we tried and everything works smoothly. Still, its lack of features is a big turn off for all but casual users. Twitter’s official app was only recently released, so keep your eye on it as they are sure to launch updates with expanded features. Since the HTC Android phones come preloaded with Peep, which has the same basic functionality, there is no reason to add this app.

Seesmic – For the user looking to balance features and speed 
 More often than not with mobile apps, having loads of features means sacrificing at least some speed. Seesmic manages to offer a host of functionality without getting bogged down. Some of these features include geotagging, lists, search and multiple retweet styles. Seesmic also gives you a widget for your desktop. There are a lot of features in there for free that usually only come with the premium version of apps. If we had to pick an over all best Twitter app for Android, it would be Seesmic. 

Twidroid – For the user looking for the maximum amount of features 
Twidroid boasts a wide array of functions, including the fan-favorite slidescreen integration. It also allows linking up with other services like TwitPic, Posterous and bit.ly, among others. But for the full experience, including multiple accounts and customizable themes, you need to upgrade to Twidroid Pro. Even the free version is far ahead of most other apps in the range of features, so if you’re looking for the app with the most flexibility, this is it.

Hootsuite – For the professional user with multiple accounts and tweeters 
Hootsuite is the best bet for professionals using Twitter for marketing. You can schedule tweets from your Android phone and manage multiple accounts, which includes the ability to give multiple people access to those accounts, adding and withdrawing access as you see fit. The Android version works best in tandem with the desktop version, so if you’ve been using Hootsuite to manage your accounts, this is the best way to go mobile with your Twitter use. And thanks to Hootsuite’s acquisition of Swift - the speediest Twitter for Android app around - the app doesn’t lag despite being feature heavy.

Touiteur – For the user looking for the prettiest interface 
Touiteur (which we eventually realized is supposed to sound like Twitter, but more French) has by far the slickest and most polished interface of any app we looked at. With animated menus and transitions in a compact, streamlined design, Touiteur is a dream to use. But the glitz comes with a couple catches. The features are quite limited in the free version – you’ll have to pay get link shortening, widgets and multiple account support. And if it’s speed you’re after, this isn’t the app for you, it’s noticeably slower than most of the others. But we’re almost inclined to say it’s worth it.

Developers are starting to put serious effort into creating apps for Android, as these great options showcase. Do you have a favorite Twitter app that we missed? Let us know.

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.

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Taking Mother’s Day into the digital age

Mother’s Day is almost here (May 9th if you’re in America). If you’re like me, it always sneaks up on you and you’re left scrambling at the last second. Since I live in Sweden and my mother lives in the US, buying a present at the last minute is not possible. Sure, there is always the traditional flowers, but these days they feel so impersonal. Thanks to the world wide web, you’re no longer limited to cards, overpriced flowers and chocolate. Today you can choose from customized photo books, DIY gift baskets or the Bacon of the Month Club.

 

Findgift.com is THE site to find creative gifts. Stumped on what to get? Click on Mother’s Day Gift ideas and find items like family character magnets, a mosaic humming bird feeder, a pyramid planter or over 1300 different gift ideas. I’m torn between the potato chip of the month subscription or a 10 motor massage cushion with heat. 

If you’re looking for something more personal, Shutterfly might be the place for you. Upload your photos to the site and create your own photo book, cards or a custom photo or video website. Instead of creating a labor intensive scrapbook, add your photos and create a hard or soft cover book in more than 20 different styles. This is a wonderful way to save your photos instead of printing them out for a photo album or scrapbook.

Design it yourself allows anyone to create their own gift basket. Your mom a big gardener or a golfer or a coffee lover? They have gift baskets for all of those. Plus they give you the ability to create over 9 different types of gift baskets. There are loads of great options.

Finally, if you don’t have a lot of money to spend but want to send something personalized, Bluemountain.com allows you to create, print or send your own cards. What mother wouldn’t appreciate an animated card from their son or daughter? You can also record your own message to be included in the card.

Mother’s Day may be fast approaching, but now you have no reason to miss the chance show her just how much you appreciate her and all the things she does.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.

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Our latest web project goes live

Working within the pharmaceutical industry is a tricky task. The legal issues alone have kept many companies from going full force into the online world. Never one to back down from a challenge, we at The Duffy Agency dove head first into the task of creating a website for a pharmaceutical company. Working with Almirall, we wanted to create a website that didn’t just sell a drug, but provided a useful resource for both patients and physicians. The result is vaniqa.co.uk, a website dedicated to women dealing with unwanted facial hair. We hope you find it informative and share it with people you know looking for help with this condition. 

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Twitter and Facebook continue to push boundaries of private vs. public

Twitter and Facebook are growing up and dragging the Internet with them. On June 30, 2010, Twitter will shut off basic authentication in favor of the much more secure OAuth. They’ve launched a website with a countdown clock in anticipation of the change. At the same time, Facebook is changing from Facebook Connect to their new “Open Graph API” and “Like” system. Mashable has created a nice guide to help you understand what the Open Graph API is.

The change for Twitter makes connecting to third party applications more secure and should reduce the occurrence of people having their accounts hacked. This is a very smart move for Twitter since, if they want to grow and offer more services, they have to deal with their security issues. There will still be basic authorization for streaming API for apps that need realtime access to Twitter, as these will take longer to switch over to the new system.

The Facebook change is being made to create a larger sphere of influence and to track users’ web habits when they aren’t on Facebook so they can offer new content for them to enjoy. Websites can add a “like” button which, when clicked by a visitor, sends a link back to their Facebook page. This is a big deal for websites as it lets their visitors share content on a more personal level and will boost their traffic. The new system looks to ultimately become a mixture of Delicious, StumbleUpon and Reddit all at once. Basically, a mix of the best of social media sharing sites.

These changes should be great for both Twitter and Facebook, giving them more control of the user experience and allowing for a higher degree of customization. Privacy experts are, of course, up in arms. Both companies can now track your online activity and sell that data to marketers and businesses. The new face of the Internet is user data-mining and Twitter and Facebook are only doing what Google has been doing for years. As we rush to share our common experiences online, we give up some of our privacy. That’s the trade off, if you want your friends and family to know what you’re doing, you have to be willing to give up a piece of yourself. 

These changes aren’t as Orwellian as critics would have you believe. It’s another service that these mega sites believe will provide a more customized and unique experience. Is this a step in the right direction or are we headed to a day when our every move online will be tracked and sold to the highest bidder?

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.

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SEO tips: writing title tags

How to create the perfect title tag – and why you need to

A lot of friends ask me for advice when it comes to SEO. Nine times out of ten the first question is: How can I make my website/blog perform better on search engines – without spending any time or money?

Since I have to be the bad guy and inform them that, at least on our planet, that’s impossible, I give them the best place to start: their title tags. Writing great title tags is the most important thing you can do to explain what your website is about, both to Google and to potential visitors. It’s also one of the least time- and money-consuming SEO tactics you can use, while often making a very quick, noticeable difference in your search engine rankings.

The title tag is that blue link that appears in Google search results, and also the name of each webpage that appears at the very top bit of your web browser. Google’s search bots read these tags first to start judging what your page is about and what keywords are most relevant, so they basically tell Google that your site is what users want to see when they look for certain keywords.

 

As this tag is what appears in search results, a well-written one is likely to get you a higher percentage of click-throughs. Consider a potential visitor searching for new Ray Ban sunglasses. Which title do you think they will find more appealing:

"Sunglasses – Check out the new collection of Ray Ban sunglasses" - or -

"Welcome to my website!"

The tricky bit is appealing to the human beings you want to click your link while squeezing the most relevant keywords in there. With a little extra thought, it’s very doable. Here are six tips to help guide you in writing the most effective title tags for each page of your website.

1.  Make the first word/words of you title the keywords you want to capture users on – if you haven’t figured out what keywords you want to focus on, you can go here to see what keywords related to your content are getting the most searches on Google.

2.  Make the title reflect the information on the page. Misleading people will lead to an extremely high bounce rate and very few conversions.

3.  Don't use more then 63 characters. Google wont show the entire title if you do.

4.  If it makes sense to do so, use your title as the headline of your webpage – users expect to find the title on the page and it also reinforces the keywords you’re using.

5. Getting your brand/site name in there is a good idea for establishing trust and expanding your footprint, but you should generally put it at the end of the tag after a vertical line so the search focus is on your keywords.

6.  Your title will end up as a link in the search results, so make it compellingly clickable.

That’s about all there is to writing a great title tag. The most difficult part is determining which keywords to focus on for each page’s tags and content. Stay tuned for a future blog post on just that. 

If you want more information about writing the perfect title tag, check out the video below by Gareth Davies of GSINC Ltd.  

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Twitter on the right track with Promoted Tweets

Twitter may have set a new record for most time spent running a business without trying to make money. But the streak finally ended last week when they unveiled Promoted Tweets – the company’s first major step towards monetizing their hugely popular service after years of saying, “eh, we’ll figure it out later.” 

Promoted Tweets are tweets from businesses that appear as ads at the top of search results based on certain keywords. So if Starbucks tweets about a special offer, they can pay to have that tweet appear as the first result in searches about coffee. Advertisers win these keywords by bidding against other companies who want their tweets to be at the top of the list. Unsurprisingly, the companies on board at launch include many who have heavily invested in marketing through Twitter already like Best Buy, Virgin America, Starbucks and Bravo. AdAge and The New York Times wrote up detailed reports on the specifics. 

 In an attempt to keep the PTs relevant and not feeling like spam, just paying to be there isn’t enough to stay on top. Twitter says they will measure the “resonance” of the tweets, i.e. how many users interact with them by retweeting or favoriting, and take down any PTs that are not resonating enough with users. That’s a pretty smart move as it allows users to still be in some control of all content and determine themselves what they want to see. 

Sponsored search results is just the first step, as Twitter plans to extend Promoted Tweet placement into your regular twitter feed in the future. How that will go over remains to be seen as it’s a lot more intrusive than sponsoring search results. But if Twitter can keep the paid content highly relevant, I don’t think users will mind too much. Though given the randomness of most tweeple out there, defining what their interests are and keeping that content highly relevant won’t always be so cut and dry. 

As Promoted Tweets aren’t a lot different than the Tweets from businesses themselves that have been bouncing around Twitter for years, and since they are limiting one PT per results page, the change should be relatively painless. And as the content should be highly relevant and interesting to users, Twitter should do quite well with this monetization plan. The real test of its success will be how many users start turning to Twitter as a search engine and away from traditional engines like Google. Twitter says the numbers are already “huge,” and if the numbers continue growing, Twitter have themselves a gold mine. 

After years of providing us with a completely free, unsponsored service, I say good for them. How do you feel about Twitter’s move to cash in?

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.

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4 tools to keep your business going when a volcano erupts

The volcano currently dumping large amounts ash over Europe has ground traffic to a halt and left people scrambling. One of our managing partners is actually stuck in Stockholm right now. This got me to thinking about how people can keep their businesses going despite unexpected events keeping face-to-face meetings from happening. We put together a toolkit to help you out now that you won’t be flying to present your next project or having that important meeting.

Skype is the best way to communicate from long distance over the web, from daily instant messaging to making international calls to video conferencing. It also allows you to transfer files, which makes it even easier to have one-on-one meetings. The service allows you to send an SMS from Skype and has voicemail and call forwarding. It’s a must have for any business these days.

Gotomeeting.com allows you to conduct a webinar, conduct training seminars or have a simple business meeting. People can call in from a landline through the Go to Meeting software. It allows you to record the meeting, share applications and get feedback afterwards. Attendees can edit documents on screen, chat, and even view meetings through an iPad. It’s a great service that allows you to demo for 30-days or purchase a monthly or yearly subscription. I’ve attended several meetings through Gotomeeting.com and it works great. 

Prezi.com is a new site that allows you to create presentations online. If don’t have Keynote or PowerPoint, Prezi is your solution. The site is easy to use and the presentation navigation helps you move beyond a typical PowerPoint slideshow. The site isn’t for everyone, but people tired of the traditional slideshow style presentations will enjoy this unique site.

Thebox.net is your solution for file sharing from a distance. For $9.95 a month, the site gives you 10 GB of space and a 1 GB file size limit. This is a great way to save huge files you want to access while you’re traveling. If you need to send a group a large file, you can just save it to thebox.net. You can give multiple people permission to access files, which makes group projects with people from all over the world simple without having to set up a hosting server and FTP clients. 

The next time a natural disaster strikes, or life in general gets in the way, don’t worry. Just use these online tools and you’ll be able to continue your work without missing a beat. 

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.

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