They just lost a potential prospect for a website project I am planning to contribute too. When asked by other contributors to give my opinion of the package offering, I admit it was quite good.

I took a look at the hosting offering, however I was shocked and annoyed by the marketing tactic used, when I attempted to exit the I was hit by a JavaScript pop-up window, I haven’t seen the likes of this tactic for years.

I was also written to by “Lisa” whom I managed to trick into revealing it wasn’t a real person but actually an automated system.

I don’t like tactics like this, its deceiving and does not install confidence in a company, it only needs to annoy people, who are busy bees.

This truly should be embarrassing for the businessperson if they are not using their own professional email account e.g mail@conversationcreators.com.

For me using a free email provider illustrates two key significant things:

• The business owner is not savvy enough in business to have found a web hosting package which offers free unlimited web mail account set up. This would allow the business owner even to split the communicate flow and to manage mail in a more effiecent way, such as; info@example.com & suggestions@example.com

• Secondly in relation to trust, I would never put trust in a business who I should communicate with using a free provider. This is just bad marketing, it might not be obvious to all in a active cognitive way, but certainly in a passive way it tarnished any chance of taking the business seriously.

CNBC Business Magazine

I may have just found my combo magazine, a combination of Wired, Fast Company and Fortune all in one.

The April Edition of CNBC Magazine carries a front cover article of the future of mobile – Augment Reality and an interview with the pioneers of this technology in Europe.

Inside Articles of Note

Lip Service
Poppy King the new queen of lipstick is profiled in the “Rising” section, she discusses about the rise and fall and rise again of her career from working with Estee Lauder to going it alone and getting her products stocked in Barneys New York. She even wrote a book about her experiences which is chronicalized in Lessons of a Lipstick Queen

Every Move You Make

An analysis of a rising but not new market research technique used by big companies to make big decisions – Ethnography is study consumer behaviour, how we really behave and interact with products and services. This analysis provides case studies from Microsoft, Philips to Lego. From Children to Adults, we are all been watched for what we are worth.

Branching Out

2010 is the year for the Big Mac to expand its reach further in Europe, which is Mc Donalds biggest and most successful market, Denis Hennequin is interviewed about his plan for the Europe strategy.

Packing a Punch

Is a delightful article with a short trip down memory lane with the history of the suitcase and a look towards the future of the industry, with shorter trips and rising airline levies on cases, the article focuses on how manufactures must become innovative to stay relevant.

**Best Feature in this months magazine**

Weird Site High Traffic Now What charts the success of such sites as bookofodds.com and mizpee to list a few of the bizaares.

140 Character Marketing would have a adventurous gestimate that the low barrier to entry and the high access to a specific information of users such as age, interest or geo market they are living in, companies are saving million on actually using such services as Twitter. Twitter cuts out the waste and gone are the days of such questions like:

50% of your marketing budget is wasted– do you know which half?

So like everything in life, there are pros and cons, but here on 140 Character Marketing we only think positive about Twitter and the many helpful complimentary sites

Let us help you set up a 140 Character Marketing strategy today. Read our Pre Twitter Engagement Section before you send your first Tweet. Read it!

Be Sweet and dont forget to Retweet this post.

Twitter can be used not only for your external communication but also your internal.

We here at twitter140charactermarketing.com also use Twitter for internal communication, and here is how:

Set up a new Twitter account for corporate use, and make sure to protect the updates so that the general twitterverse cannot see them. Send the name of the corporate Twitter account to all the relevant people and ask them to apply to follow the account. The administrator of the corporate twitter account can then manually approve the followers to view the tweets.

Next step is to register your Twitter account with grouptweet.com, this site offers a useful service that when your individual account sends your corporate account a DM, it is displayed as a normal tweet for all the approved followers to see.

Benefits

Collaborate on projects in a centralised way.

Drawback

There is a slight lag time in comparison with the normal Twitter interface, but not enough to make it unusable.

Link: http://grouptweet.com/

Create a Widget for your website, like the examples provided below from http://twitstamp.com

Dell has over 30 Twitter accounts and 1Million followers.  The Dell accounts focus on a range of topics and marketing efforts from Discounts – “coupon publishing”, Idea Generation accounts, an account set up to exclusively publish Dell’s Blog post titles + links to service accounts for the western European isles of Britain and Ireland.

Dell is using Twitter to sell & promote, to listen, speak and overall engage with the Twitterverse in a targeted way. Those who wish to find a bargain will follow the discount account @DellOutlet and for those who wish to engage can @IdeaStorm

The above mini case study is perfect example of segmentation in order to provided a more focused communication and eliminating noise. According to recent reports the Dell discount account which was free to set up earned dell direct revenue of 1Million dollars in just a couple of months.

Twitter140CharacterMarketing is here to consult you and provide you an indepth advise on creating and executing a Twitter strategy – Write to us via our twitter account @ http://twitter.com/140CharMarkting

A complete overview of all Dell Twitter accounts can be found on their corporate site – http://www.dell.com/twitter.

They are not alternatives of each other rather complements of an overall marketing strategy, your use of blogging as a communication technique can become an integral part of your 140 character marketing strategy.

Let us introduce you to TwitterFeed, this is an application whereby you register your details, type in your blog URL’s RRS feed and Twitter account. Once having don’t this every time you publish a new post the headline and introduction text of that blog post will be automatically published on Twitter for all your followers to see.

Twitterfeed doesn’t just feed your Twitter account but can also feed your Facebook fansite also. Another major benefit of this site is the reporting it offers of click through that came as a result of the automated publishing. You can then see how effect this application is to your overall strategy.

Watch Guy Kawasaki talking about his use of Twitterfeed.

Twitter has adapted its status question from “What are you doing?” to “What’s Happening“!

The microblogging site was originally conceived for mobile updating and the founders didn’t foreseen the huge explosion of businesses, celebrities etc using the platform for their marketing and self promotion purpose.

Twitter decided last week to change the status, this is really great for businesses as it makes the message much more powerful and relevant to the question which Twitter is asking.

So sharing links, breaking some news or surveying your followers will be much more meaningful with the new status question.

No one expects there to be a huge change because of this, but Twitter has just adapted itself yet again to make it more comfortable for the masses to express themselves.

So What’s Happening? Find out over on our Twitter Page @140CharMarkting

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