April 10, 2008 – Vol. 2, Issue 8

Hearing more about Twitter these days? We thought you might be. The two-year old, free microblogging service is just now edging its way into mainstream; meanwhile, it’s also being recognized as a useful tool for businesses and nonprofits alike. If you’re scratching your head over that one, stay with us…Can it trigger A.D.D. behavior? With the steady stream of updates, yes. But does it also give you access, insight and personal contact with individuals and communities of interest? Absolutely.

While the uses continue to multiply, we’ve selected a few we think you will find interesting. Check them out:

Analyst Stalking (who, us?)

OK, so, maybe not stalking… but we know that a number of our readers follow industry analysts. With Twitter, you can do the next best thing to following their thoughts. Interestingly enough, many are very actively engaged with Twitter sharing information about projects they are working on and what they are reading, while also soliciting feedback. Here’s your chance to make a golden connection!

While finding them can take some digging, here’s a list posted by analyst expert Sage Circle to get you started.

Shh… Did you hear that? Did someone just tweet about us?

No, we’re not paranoid; we’re talking reputation management. And recon. To find out if anyone is talking about your company or organization, your products, your clients, your (fill in the blank) on Twitter, do a quick search on Tweet Scan, a real time third-party search engine for Twitter. (You can even add it to your search bar.) You might be surprised by what you discover…

On crazy days, ping me, Sandy.

Maybe this one falls more into the novelty category, but we’re finding it quite handy, particularly on hectic days: it (or rather she) is called Sandy. Sandy is our digital personal assistant, but we’ll share her with you!

Once you sign up, instead of turning to your colleague and asking, “can you remind me to call client X back before 3?” you can ask Sandy to do it instead. The reminder will be delivered in your Twitter stream. (or in your email, or on your cell phone!) Nifty. She can do lots of things besides remind you. She keeps lists, schedules. And you can also ask Sandy to do stuff by Jott. We wrote about Jott last year…

We heart Sandy.

Stump the Researcher

A loyal reader asks…For a presentation I’m doing, I need to know the correlation between the make and model of the car one drives, and the kind of radio stations one listens to. For example, do 50 percent of the drivers of Dodge Rams tune into country stations? Can you help?

Of course we can. (Did you know Wendy was a media planner back in nineteen hundreds?) The answer is…

The birds are chirping and all we can do is tweet… (sorry, a twitter joke).

See you in two weeks.