DO YOU KNOW WHO IS FOLLOWING YOU? FOR SURE?

Sometimes you just want to keep an eye on everyone you are friends with or following. Then again there are people you want to keep an eye on to make sure they are STILL following you. Whatever your reason we thought this was an amazing tool to have. But be warned it can be very upsetting to some people when you find out the person you have thought all along was following you…ISN”T!

http://friendorfollow.com

OUR WORLD IS GETTING SMALLER ALL THE TIME. WILL THIS HAPPEN IN BUSINESS?

 Although officially we do not start operating until September in Dubai. We are getting many requests by companies to discuss what they can do. The opportunities are very big for small business if they can connect with their local community. The potential to deliver a brand message as well as information that will generate sales is growing exponentially every day All this would obviously be seamlessly between conversations that will help forge connections with individuals. The major corporations are facing tough decisions about being on Twitter due to the speed of the micro blog idea. Twitter is a conversation that happens real time and major corporations cannot:

a) Have to be careful from a legal standpoint about what they say and claim. Having certain members of a company can Twitter under the ‘banner’ of the brand offers some protection but one slip could cause a law suit and in todays fragile economy no brand wants the extra headache or cost.

b) Major corporations take too long to react to anything. That is in the context of a micro blog. The alternative would be to just send out tweets about the product without and interaction but unless you are a news channel that because very uninteresting for anyone other than a hard core brand lover.

c) To create a department purely for social media is not something you will be seeing on a large scale for a while. Research and development departments, Research companies and PR agencies are all clambering to understand the full reach and potential that major corporations could attain from such an area.

So the big boys will stick to tried and tested routes of brand communication until years of reports tell them otherwise. Finally then there is a place for small business to be able to hit back at the big boys by playing the personal card. Advertising for any large brand is always done on a 1 – 1 level.

Fairfax cone, one of the pillars of the
advertising community, once said, “Speak to many and
you reach none. Speak to one and you reach millions.” 

After years of the big corporations killing small businesses all over the world a shift has happened in the corporate world. How big or how long this will last remains to be seen but any small business these days can ill afford to take for granted. The old saying of time will tell has never been more appropriate than here. Are we to see the that small and personal is the new big? What do you think?

View This Poll

A GREAT REPORT ABOUT THE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING INDUSTRY

We recently came across a fantastic white paper report by Michael Stelznar about the Social Media Marketing Industry. We believe this is a great read & video about who, what, when & why in social media circles. Inside you will find:

SPOTLIGHT:

Alan Firmin – The Twitter Poet @afirmin

Where to find him:

ON YOUTUBE

ON TWITTER

HIS TWEET POETRY BLOG

HIS ONLINE BUSINESS

HIS PERSONAL BLOG

HIS WORK ON THE ANDY JACOBS REPORT

HIS MARKETING BLOG

BIO: A career of nearly 20 years in advertising Alan was the youngest creative director at 26 for Grey Worldwide. A record that still stands today. He handled some of the largest brands in the world including IKEA, Volkswagen, Nokia, Kraft, SC Johnson and won over 25 awards in the process. He is now a WMI certified consultant and network marketer, Has his own advertising & branding agency (He did the CLOUD9 brand for us , Is a published writer, poet and artist. He is happily married to his beautiful wife and has two amazing children. Alan used to be a semi-pro football (Soccer) player in the UK, is a handy Kick boxer, tennis & Golf player.He is now a consultant for CLOUD9 helping out with the blogging  and Twitter later (Date to be announced) He spends his time helping people all over the world start and build their online business. 

CLOUD9 OPINION: A couple of us at CLOUD9 worked for him at Draftfcb he was our Creative Director. He is as generous in real life as he isonline and will hate this praise. But we like to wind him up which is why we put his face on our Twitter page! We asked him why he started and continues with the Twitter poetry he simply said, “It puts a smile on peoples face and makes them feel special for a moment.” We asked what he thought of Twitter and this was his response, “It has so much potential and it’s exiting that we are seeing so many different people being creative with it.” Check out Alan’s Poetry tweet blog for motivational and personal tweets. Its a great read. And followhim on Twitter to get your own poem. 

Welcome to the social media revolution! Facebook tried to control all of our pictures and although they may still in some twisted way at least the world stood up and said NO! The power of the people has swung and unless the we the people really screw this up we are on to a good thing. We are in a very interesting position right now with the way Twitter is shaping up. Twitter moves way too fast for the big corporate giants to jump in at the moment. Sure they could send out 15 – 20 tweets every day about their business model, product, global reach blah blah blah. But unless you are super cool like Ashton Kutcher or CNN who actually has something relevant to say to individuals as news happens. No one cares! There are some that believe Ashton could do more by following others as well but that is another story. The flip side is they hire someone to tweet for them. Imagine you hire someone to tweet for a major bank, investment company or any other big corporation you put yourself at the mercy of a social media pirate. 

This guy/girl could literally have you in more libel cases by the end of the day than you have ever imagined. So the flip side to that is to have every tweet go through legal and be signed of by your team of lawyers. But thats the problem. In that dilemma of speed and trust you have a what is known as a catch 22 situation. Either way the big guns are screwed. AND THANK GOD!!! Finally a place online that truly and unequivocally that belongs to the people and the big boys hate it. So what will they do? They could buy it out and change the rules. They could ensure the media calls everyone on it nerds and have a social outcast image about people on Twitter rendering the weak and social unstable to avoid or reject Twitter. Whatever happens it is going to be interesting and I hope for one Twitter fanatic who loves the freedom that it possesses would love to see the big guys running scared. 

With Twitters growth continuing at the rate it is people are taking notice. I personally have read figures of 150% and 175% growth this month alone. And it is expanding faster than the universe during the Big Bang. That is what scares the powers that be and the big brands. Take someone like Ashton Kutcher who since pipping CNN to the 1 million mark (& Thank god he did! Not only because I like Ashton or because I like to see the big guns fall but because of what Ashton offered if he got there first. 1,000 malaria nets which in my opinion was very nice considering he would have probably done it without offering anything. Imagine Ashton has a bad coca cola and says on Twitter “Thats it Coca Cola refused to give me a refund on a bad coke I will never drink Coke again I am switching to Pepsi. Everyone Lets all switch to Pepsi from now on!” It’s an interesting thought and although I would never condone such action I bet that would scare the living day lights out of a board of stuffy corporate hacks who are counting every penny for their bonus rather than the workers pension schemes. 

But lets be honest that is not where we want this to go. We have a serious responsibility, and I mean every single user of Twitter, to shape and make this what it could be. If you could see the kind of generosity and love that appears during #followfriday it makes you wonder why we can’t always be like that to each other in real life. Personally it is a day that shows me that the world still has a chance to do some good. It shows that people can and will be great people without oppression or direction from the politicians and governments of the world. People, this is the social media revolution and you today stand on the threshold of a pivotal moment in history. 10 million people and it is growing rapidly have the power to change the world. To grandiose you think? Well lets remember our history shall we. Dr Martin Luther King was one man and changed the world. Ghandi was one man and drove the british out of India. I could go on and on about the 1 man and what they did in history. If one man can do that…What could 10 million with a global reach never before seen or dreamt of achieve today? Its the social media revolution people and today is your day to be great!

CHECK OUT OUR LATEST EZINE ISSUE 2 FREE HERE TODAY

As jokes about Twitter go this is one of the most well put together and funny things we have seen done for a while. The next big thing FLUTTER!! BRAVO GUYS! BRAVO!!

FLUTTER THE NEXT BIG THING

Our very first CLOUD9 Ezine is now out and available at OpenZine. This is our first of a monthly ezine that will expand as the months go by. We hope you enjoy reading it and hope that maybe you can become a contributor if you have anything interesting to say about social media. Enjoy the CLOUD9ZINE HERE

There are a few basic rules that will help you establish yourself on Twitter. Once you have done that you will have a better understanding then to really shape Twitter to suit you or your companies experience. 

CREATING YOUR AVATAR
If you are an individual then we recommend you put your picture. Nothing connects better than the face to the name that people are talking to. Social Media is about conversation and it just makes the experience more personal and friendly. Of course you don’t need to put a passport picture in get creative with your picture and have some fun. For a company use your brand but ensure on your landing page you have some kind of people picture. We use @afirmin picture at the moment due to his popularity and the fact he will be an advisor to our company. He only agreed if we helped support the people he followed which is something we really enjoy anyway. Do not keep the standard icon it’s boring and the idea with twitter is you not something that looks the same as every newbie.

FILL IN YOUR BIO
You have a bio for a reason. The bio is there to explain a bit about who you are and what you can offer anyone who will follow you. Some people create funny bios and others are more list in formation. Whatever you do just make sure you have something. Plus if you follow @afirmin he uses it to create a clever poem about you! People tend to follow you if they get some information about you. So be clear and be generous about who you are and what you do.

UPDATES OR TWEETS
We have had many people follow us and when we look at their page they have no updates at all. That really is not an incentive for anyone to follow you is it? Twitter is about conversation, interaction, opinion, thoughts, what you are doing & thinking as well as dialogue. So start writing and they will follow.

INTERACT WITH OTHERS
Do not just sit and send tweets without any interaction. That is the same as standing on a street corner and just barking out information in the vain hope that people will hear you. Help others get their information out in the world, comment on their links, Discuss what you think about what they are saying and doing. Twitter is about interaction.  

FOLLOW THOSE WHO FOLLOW YOU
There are few things worse than the people who are followed by thousands yet only follow a few. Some people call it Twitter snobbery. We just call it Anti-Social Media. If someone is talking to you and interested in you than the least you can do is acknowledge they exist! Take a look at the video by @perrybelcher it’s a great video that really shows how many people feel.

Mostly enjoy yourself! Whether you are a company or individual if you are enjoying yourself people will relate and warm to you more than if you are preaching. No one likes the people that harp on about how much money they are making and how clever they are. Very few, if any, are actually doing any of what they say and all they do is put people off. Social media is a gift that you have to communicate with people all over the world about anything and everything. Enjoy it!