Some case studies

twitter:

Dell Outlet - offering limited new deals through twitter to its followers.

Is this really building new business or just replacing old email marketing techniques and direct mail?

Jetblue Airways - building a personal brand through asking customers what they want and providing updates on service changes to travelers while they are traveling.

It takes a significant amount of staff resource to provide this service. Is its impact on sales and profitability really measurable?

Teusnerwine - this is deemed a good case study for business use of Twitter but the brand owner him self proclaims 'this is not about trying to sell your product, but more building relationships with customers and potential customers."

The above sums it up well: Twitter and its like provide another tool to be used in the marketing and communications mix. Alone they are not good sales or business tools. You need to thin carefully about how to integrate them with your brand and business activity and to do this well takes considerable staff resource. Each case will be different and in some cases it may be worth the investment. In many cases such investment would not be justified.

What I will go on to do is draw up the ways in which twitter et al can be used to drive forward certain types of business activity related to Ravensbourne programmes and activities.

The Current TV example pasted below provides a good example of the future integration of TV with online and social media using simple ideas and simple coding: