CheezeDMG Blog

News reaches us this morning from www.thenextweb.com that Twitter is trialling advertising on profile pages. The advertising is small and unobtrusive and is currently being trialled with internal messages only.

Time will tell if this becomes a key revenue stream. It is a good step for Twitter but the real challenge is how to monetise the larger audience that use ‘clients’ like Twhirl or Tweetdeck who rarely visit profile pages.

Image courtesy of the NEXT web

Many thanks to www.thenextweb.com for breaking the story.

www.twitter.com/jamieriddell

www.twitter.com/cheezedmg

Blogs are wonderful things - write good content and it will keep delivering for years. A post I wrote over a year ago ‘Ten Tips for Better SEO Linking‘ has been one of the blog’s largest and most consistent traffic driving posts. A blip in comments over the past week indicating it had found a new audience, hitting the top natural Google spot for ‘SEO Links‘.

The article is a testament to good content - it offers useful tips, it is clear and links to other useful locations both internally and externally.

Reviewing the article again, it shows times indeed have moved on - we barely mention the Twitter SEO benefit so look out for an updated version coming out soon. ‘11 tips for better SEO linking’. You heard it here first.

www.twitter.com/cheeze_agency

www.twitter.com/jamieriddell

Twitter continues to be the number one marketing topic on everyone’s lips. As an agency we have been using Twitter as a means to connect with a wider audience and have more conversations than we have on the blog.

The blog continues to grow with a substantial boost in RSS followers this year which is a great sign. However, the blog is still quite one dimensional - we do get the occasional comment and we can see ‘who’ people are with mybloglog and Google Friend Connect (we have yet to try Twitter Remote) but we still wonder ‘who really is reading’?

One of the great things about Twitter is the ability to share information, connect with people and have one to one exchanges. None of them have to be long or complex but enough to build some form of relationship. But with Twitter we can’t expand our thoughts more than 140 characters so the blog definitely still has a role to play. Twitter does not replace the blog, neither replace Facebook - they are all channels that are independent of each other but mutually linked. They all have a role to play and will have an audience independent of each other with some element of overlap. If you are looking at evolving your brand strategy in social channels do consider all channels - they all have a role to play.

So the purpose of this post was to update on the world of Twitter. I am concious our last piece was about Twitter considering charging brands who use the service. This story was radiated, echoed, amplified in the hours that followed.

Brand Republic [site - twitter]who first broke the story were quick to post a story the following day which looked at the ramifications of the charging model. An excellent post that harnessed the wave of comments that followed the article to deliver much needed perspective.

So the current status is TWITTER WILL NOT CHARGE BRANDS and has no plans to.  This is what they posted;

… it’s important to note that whatever we come up with, Twitter will remain free to use by everyone—individuals, companies, celebrities, etc. What we’re thinking about is adding value in places where we are already seeing traction, not imposing fees on existing services.

Phew! I’m glad they cleared that up. In fact Twitter made a nice post from the fact taking snippets of the press coverage they received..

Twitter Coverage

So, Twitter continues to grow. Hitwise UK are watching the growth of Twitter and are now placing it in the top 100 traffic driving websites and in the top 5 social networks. You can keep up to date with their work on at www.twitter.com/hitwise_uk .On the Hitwise blog you can gain greater detail on these findings.

Despite a business plan, Twitter continues to raise capital, the latest round being £24.5m - pretty impressive in this market.

We are now seeing the ‘Twitter Effect’ replacing the ‘Digg Effect’ - which, if your link is picked up by a wide enough audience (and we mean wide) the potential avalanche of traffic could knock your site over for a limited time. Something that used to happen when your link hit the homepage of digg.com. You can read more about the ‘Twitter Effect’ here and the old ‘Digg Effect’ here.

And finally, Twitter is being used as a protest medium. From the 16th to the 23rd of February Creative Freedom are encouraging people to ‘blackout’ their profiles on all social networks in protest. You can read the background and instructions here. At this time not too many people (that are in my stream) have blacked out but it starts slowly. Tweets like this are the core to the campaign growing..

And that is they say, is it. Well, actually it isn’t. The market is changing before our eyes, faster than ever before. Blog posts like this become outdated all too soon. Another reason to be on Twitter.

If you liked this article, why don’t you follow us on Twitter?

If you need help with your brand in social networks or Twitter specifically, we can help

Jamie

www.twitter.com/jamieriddell

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The web has erupted this morning with news that Twitter might charge brands for being on (er) Twitter. The article, published exclusively by Brand Republic (and echoed at Tech Crunch) includes a hint from Biz Stone (co founder of Twitter) that they may charge brands for being on Twitter.

The comment was reportedly thus:

We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following
them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable
and charge for commercial accounts.

So, no details yet as to how and how much. One has to remember that to date Twitter has not published a business plan or publicly shared its plans for revenue generation, so any snippet like this will be rightly analysed and amplified as the day progresses.

Don’t Panic!

For those brands that are on Twitter, and for those considering ‘jumping in’ there is no need to fear. There will still be a lot of work to be done before the rules and the costs can be fixed and I would suggest this needs to include a substantial amount of consultation to get the balance of inclusion and income just right.

A big debate will be ‘what defines a brand’ - we have brands on Twitter from Fake Bake to Dell, Ford & Chrysler. We also have celebrities who are in themselves brands (@wossy , @johncleese) and we have ‘web celebs’ like Kevin Rose, Leo Laporte and Robert Scoble who indirectly will be using Twitter as a business channel, not to mention agencies like Cheeze who are using Twitter as a method of being in the conversation to drive the conversation.

So, don’t worry just yet. This is important news, but nothing has changed. We wil be watching the story to ensure we keep you up to date with progress and any changes that happen. You can follow us on twitter or grab the blog RSS feed.

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• Twitter To Start Charging Companies For Having An Account? (techcrunch.com)
• Will Twitter integrate Search this week? (thenextweb.com)

We are seeking a Business Development Director, to work alongside the Client Development Director and directly to the Managing Director.

The role can be based in our Ipswich office or London office and will require time spent in both locations as well as time travelling within the UK.

You can see the full job spec here and all current agency vacancies here. The job ad is also listed on e-consultancy.

Respectfully we ask for no agencies at this time.