Welcome to Alternation! Today we’re talking about Twitter, specifically using the network for customer service.

Customer Service With Twitter

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Southwest Airlines’ response to Kevin Smith is a good example of a company using Twitter to handle a situation that could have been out of their control. Toyota is doing the same thing, to a degree, and using Tweetmeme to try and steer the conversation about their massive recall in a positive direction. In both cases, Twitter is helping businesses repair a tarnished image; something that would have been far more difficult to do in years past.

Best Buy launch the “Twelp Force” last summer; a way for people to ask Best Buy employees questions through Twitter. As of a few weeks ago, the Twelp Force had answered over 22,000 questions, and averages 100 questions answered a day. The Twelp Force is a great example of a business using Twitter as a combined service and marketing front, since they are answering questions, and commonly referring people to products and services Best Buy offers.
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When I first walked through Alter Imaging’s fabulous doors as an official employee, I was about as excited as a girl could get (without something chocolate or sparkly dangling in front of her face). That being said, I was also a tad shaky/nervous/terrified/nauseated due to my, shall we say, “green-ness.”

I had just recently graduated from Appalachian State (Go Mountaineers!!) with a degree in Advertising, a minor in Business Marketing, and a vague understanding of the general working world. But I scored big with landing a dream-job at AI and I was confident that I was prepared for whatever tasks were thrown my way.

Little did I know, I knew very little.

I was first clued-in that I still had a lot to learn when someone said, “Emily, please FTP the XML sitemap for the SEO so we can boost our pagerank ASAP.” Umm, what?! Okay, ASAP means “as soon as possible.” And that was the extent of my comprehension of that sentence. I had to do something with a something for the something to boost our something, as soon as possible.

So I did what any resourceful, 20-something would do: I threatened befriended the web developer and forced asked him to teach me important web lingo. If I heard a term I was unfamiliar with, I would write it down and later go get the definition from my new victim teacher. It was a beautiful system.

Often when I speak with clients, a term or web process comes up that they’re not familiar with, so I (with my newfound knowledge) would explain it to them so we’re all on the same page.

And then I had an epiphany. (more…)

Welcome to AlterNation Episode 3! We’re taking a close look at using Facebook for business and marketing, and we discuss all sorts of tips and tricks.

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Getting Started
Facebook has a decent system in place to show you how to set up various portions of your page, but after that they don’t give any instructions. There are lots of things you can do, and should do to improve your page and connect better with fans and clients. One of the earliest, and most vital things you need to do for your page is obtain a Facebook vanity URL, at WiseStamp is a useful tool for adding this sort of link to emails.
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About gaming, that is. Welcome to AlterNation Episode 2! This week we talk online social games, location-based services and the dangers invovled with them (oh my!), and look at a case of schools using webcams to spy on students, big brother style.

For show notes, click more.

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Welcome to AlterNation, the official Alter Imaging podcast! Alternation will provide a weekly review of the latest internet news, as well as commentary and tips. In episode 1 we discuss the huge amount of Google news from last week, Facebook’s 6th anniversary, and some interesting statistics.

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For show notes, click more.

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If I was walking up to a customer on the street to sell them something, I would probably not bring a sledgehammer with me to get my points across. It seems funny, but this is exactly how Rick Burnes, inbound marketing manager at Hubspot, describes traditional marketing. They hammer out messages via advertisements (radio, TV, magazines) in an attempt to beat customers down with their message and brand (through repetition). Now that method may have been great for companies with massive budgets such as P&G or McDonalds, but today you don’t need to spend nearly the same amount of money to cultivate a loyal following.

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 I never thought I would be an apologist for the Flash platform, but it’s only when something is gone do you really realize how much it means to you. Much the same way that HTML tables have gotten a bad rap due to its misuse, Flash also has a stained past. Many Flash based websites suffered from poor usability due to long-loading Flash intros, unintuitive navigation, and a lack of possibilities for SEO.

The Web 2.0 movement began a design trend towards clean, light websites along a more considerate view towards visitors with less capable browsers and mobile devices. Flash is now mostly used for interacting with entertainment, whether it’s viewing a video, playing a game, or manipulating information in a Flash based infographic.

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Why does every social media website care where you are? Better yet, why do you care? There is a trend, although not a new one, that is gaining popularity in 2010 that could potentially change the way people are marketed to. That is the trend to “go local,” because that’s where the money is. Everyone is trying to grab hold of the hyper-niche markets like the popular service review site Yelp. Yelp recently added the option to allow users to check in, bringing it in direct competition with an already over-crowded group of location based websites: Foursquare, MyTown, GoWalla, and Loopt.

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When you hear “Just do it” or “Think Different“, what comes to mind? If you’ve been conditioned enough, you’ll recognize that the two phrases are the taglines of Nike and Apple. The same thing goes for other taglines like “Who ya gonna call” (Ghostbusters) and “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” (Kellogg’s Rice Krispies). These taglines stick for two reasons, you’ve heard them often, and they’re well designed. If those are the two factors for tagline success, then it’s easy to write a good tagline, right?

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If marketing is a battle for the consumer’s mind, then what do the consumers have to say? That is basically the idea behind the website Brandtags.net. When the site first loads it slaps a random logo in the center of the page and asks you for the first word or phrase that comes to mind. After doing a few you are allowed to check on other brands and see what people think about them (the words are enlarged on screen by order of popularity). Good marketers should have specific words or phrases that they want to be associated with, and their branding strategy should reflect this.

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