Ticketmaster’s intention to “do a better job” with transparency about “convenience fees” – listing them at the start of the purchase process – came over the transom via Twitter.

Irving Azoff, Ticketmaster's head honcho, posted a tweet to that effect on Sunday, and it conveniently became the basis for the inaugural blog post the next day for the brand's new corporate blog, Ticketology, which copped to the most-detested part of its dealings with customers — service fees.

The post attempts to make nice with customers with a missive that begins, "We get it — you don’t like service fees. You don’t like them mostly because you don’t understand what the heck they are for. We’ll try to do a better job in this space over the coming months of helping you understand our business, and how our fees compare to others in the industry."

But as Wired points out, Ticketmaster's new system still doesn’t explain the breakdown of fees, nor does it auto-update the total price for multiple tickets – but keeps listing single ticket prices.Continue reading...

Marketing software maker HubSpot has analyzed 9 million Twitter profiles and has come to the conclusion that accounts with a profile picture average about 10 times more followers than those without.

What is the reason? Generally a Twitter profile associated with a default avatar looks amateurish. For many, Twitter is about following experts, not just ordinary people – that’s what Facebook is for.

Media site Dosh Dosh examined the Top Ten Twitterholics based on Followers and found that they built large audiences through already established popularity. Most had followers from being deemed experts and rely on the strength of their reputation or personal brand. Integrating your brand or expertise into your profile is crucial, as is using websites or other platforms to promote your Twitter profile.Continue reading...

According to recent research at Penn State University, one in five (20 percent) tweets posted on Twitter includes an inquiry or information about a specific brand-related product or service.

The study focused on micro-communicating and the value of this word-of-mouth medium. It included observation of more than half a million tweets that used brand names, and found out that brand-tweeters are tweeting to connect with products.

“Businesses use micro-communication for brand awareness, brand knowledge, and customer relationship,” said Jim Jansen, associate professor of information science and technology in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) at Penn State. “Personal use is all over the board. It may be right up there with e-mail in terms of its communication impact."Continue reading...

First, it was dogs driving cars in the latest Subaru television commercials. Now, however, we've seen everything: Twitter for dogs.

This fall, Mattel will introduce Puppy Tweets, a high-tech toy that attaches to a dog's collar and automatically sends updates to the dog's Twitter account.

No, Puppy Tweets doesn't really translate what a dog is thinking, though dog owners might imagine it does. Instead, the toy randomly generates one of 500 programmed tweets when it detects a dog's movement or barking. For example, if a dog barks, Puppy Tweets might transmit the message, "I bark because I miss you. There, I said it. Now hurry home."Continue reading...

For decades franchise brands such as McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Church’s Chicken relied on consistent, uniform marketing efforts to entice hungry consumers through their doors. The brands were in control of their public image, and in the food industry – which is susceptible to any number of brand crises – that paradigm served them well. Then, technology changed everything.

Advertising is no longer pushed from the brand onto the customers. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube empowered consumers and allowed them to wrest themselves free of sleek marketing campaigns that brands employ with demographic precision. Today, if a consumer purchases an undercooked chicken sandwich at a McDonald’s they can blog about it – sometimes to large audiences – and their experiences and opinions are instantly believed and valued by others. Now that’s power.

Is this development new? No.Continue reading...

The Internet is all atwitter about Twitter, a brand that has reached an estimated value of $1 billion since its founding in 2006.

Like other social media, Twitter faces a dilemma: it is easier to sign up users than it is to monitize them. Personal accounts are free, and the microblogging site has yet to settle on a proper business model.

Taking a step in that direction, Twitter is establishing paid-for business accounts. Founder Biz Stone assures businesses they can still use Twitter for free, but the paid accounts will provide a "special layer of access" that includes feedback and statistics.Continue reading...

Is the wake of major magazine closures and layoffs a great time for the Magazine Publishers Of America to remind people that print still rules? Maybe.

You have to give the MPA credit, especially if you're one of those, like me, who doesn't believe that the Internet will actually drive glossy magazines into extinction. Their new promotion, “The Twenty Tweetable Truths About Magazines,” is a cute gimmick to spread factoids, each with its source, that testify to the "vitality of magazines." The campaign sends the message that the print magazine industry "gets" social media and the Internet. According to the MPA:

We wanted each “truth” to be short and simple to understand, which is why they’re 140 characters or less.

The MPA e-mailed its members, asking them to pass along the link (with a Twitter-friendly shortcode: http://bit.ly/6qNKn but no #hashtag) to "clients, advertisers, reporters, suppliers, politicians, vendors, interns, family and friends (especially via Facebook and LinkedIn)." On their site, each "truth" provides a link so users can retweet. It seems to be working: a Twitter search shows the MPA's message is beginning to circulate.

So how do their "Twenty Tweetable Truths" stack up? Having worked in print media, I'm ready to take a stab at providing some backstory. I may not be neutral, but their central premise (that despite the Internet, people still like to relax with magazines) rings true for me. But some of their items seem a little off-message.Continue reading...

Though Kanye West may have stolen the mic from young Taylor Swift at the recent MTV Video Music Awards, Twitter may have upstaged even Kanye, MTV reports:

1.3 million VMA-related tweets were unleashed between the time the show started and when it wrapped Sunday night. By Monday morning, the number had ballooned to 2 million. The numbers were unprecedented for Twitter.

While Twitter clearly has powerful reach, marketers hoping to send branding messages to its millions of users face some challenges.Continue reading...