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I was almost entirely unsure of what exactly it was until I watched the video below. Twitter is a free social networking service that acts as a personal micro-blog. Through SMS, instant messaging or email, users can send updates to their account that are automatically sent to other users who have subscribed to their Twitter feed. Updates are sent to subscribers’ Twitter page, instant messaging, SMS, RSS or email or can even be directly posted on the users blog via third-party applications. User’s can dictate who updates may be sent to; whether it’s just their circle or friends or open to the public.

How does it change communications? It’s instant, often more candid than a blog and let’s you update all of your friends (well, those who are subscribers) on the fly. From a social marketing standpoint, Twitter is a brand new medium. Sports entertainment companies can use it to update subscribers on game times and scores, publishers can use it to announce new book releases or signings, web vendors like Amazon.com or eBay can announce special offers, etc. The list is endless and virtually every industry can benefit from it.

After analyzing what’s going on in your sphere of the web, the second step is to undergo a series of (mostly onsite) optimizations. Your goal is to make your site easy to locate and navigate. Valuable content is probably the most important aspect here. Search engines find your site because of text content. Don’t just clutter your page with words, but rather think about how to use it most effectively. Create a PDF guide about a much-discussed relevant topic or industry, then use it as an incentive to get people to sign up to your email newsletter.

• First and foremost, ensure that your website is build with user experience best practices in mind. If you don’t know where to start, shoot me an email and I will send you a list of best practices to get you started
• Optimize your website for search engines. Improve your content, linking (in-links and incoming links) and navigation.
• Create a PDF guide and use it an incentive to get people to sign up for your email newsletter
• Set-up an email newsletter
• Develop a blog to communicate with prospective/current customers and all stakeholders in an authentic fashion
• Optimize press releases with relevant keywords, then publish through newswires

After you have analyzed your web presence and made some on-site optimization changes, it’s time to start publicizing your efforts and to start participating.

Every month the Portland Business Journal puts on what they call a “Power Breakfast.” The thought being that “powerful” individuals (myself excluded) can get together over a semi-warm breakfast of powdered eggs and over-sugared pastries to learn, share and, of course, network.

This is why sometimes it can be a little difficult to talk me into these events. I know, I know… I’m in PR, this should be what I live for. But the fact of the matter is, I specialize in online PR, where I deal with bloggers all day and do the talking with my keyboard. It’s a totally different ball game when you sit me at a table full of strangers armed only with business cards and very expensive smiles.

However, even these fears couldn’t keep me away from the October Power Breakfast as I was truly excited about the guests of honor—Tom and Kate Chappell, the co-founders of Tom’s of Maine. If you aren’t familiar with Tom’s of Maine just take a stroll down your neighborhood grocery store’s hygiene aisle. I can almost guarantee you will find a Tom’s product within 30 seconds—they are the number one natural care brand in the country. With products such as toothpaste, mouthwash, deodorant, body wash and a whole slew of others, the Chappell’s have unarguably built an empire, but what is so interesting about them are the terms in which they continue to build that empire.

Tom’s of Maine is one of the more value-driven companies I have ever seen. When Tom and Kate founded the company in 1970 they knew that they could actually do more for the world around them by starting a for-profit company. They understood that while non-profits are so important to our communities and environment, they need to receive funding from somewhere. That’s where Tom’s of Maine steps in. Tom’s donates an unbelievable 10 percent—no, I did not put an extra zero in—back to their community and chosen non-profits. Through their works they have been able to partner with non-profits in the Dental Health for All program, as well as the River Awareness Program.

One thing I found particularly interesting about their interview session was Tom’s talk of going to Harvard Divinity School in the early 90s. Wanting to learn how to grow his business, Tom took a rather unconventional route. Instead of doing the traditional MBA thing, he wanted to be able to look at his business from the flipside—from a spiritual and conscious point of view. I have never heard of any businessperson doing this, but obviously it was successful for him, and if one had the same drive they could surely learn an insane amount from his example. I am not a particularly spiritual person myself, but I can wholly respect trying to look at things (particularly business and business ethics) through a different lens.

I was surprised to learn that Tom’s received only a minimal amount of criticism when they decided to sell to Colgate in 2006. I had thought they would have gotten a lot more pressure from their customers for seemingly going against everything Tom’s stood for, but the Chappell’s insist that this was a decision made to ensure that their customers only keep receiving even more great natural products from Tom’s. They said Colgate has had a very hands-off approach to their brand because they understand that those values need to stay intact for their customers to keep buying it. I’d be interested to see how long that approach realistically lasts for…

In short, this was a great event put on by the Portland Business Journal (minus the egg/pastry debacle), and I look forward to them putting on some more Power Breakfasts featuring leaders in the organic/natural/sustainable movement.

The only thing that remains to be asked is, how can we incorporate Tom’s of Maine values into our own business? At R2 we have participated in volunteer days and the like (which is all great and important), but what are those extra steps we can take to go beyond the norm?

… And who are these posers all over television wearing thick, black-rimmed glasses and enjoying their PDAs so publicly? Oh, wait, they’re models – these people were the kids who were popular in junior high, now dressing up as the kids they ignored at the school dances.

Um, okay, so now it’s cool to be a geek. We “Dr. Who” fans have always known this, and it’s nice that the rest of the world seems to be finally starting to come around. Hope it’s not just a passing fad, like hoola-hoops or Time Lord scarves.

But wait, something’s different here, isn’t it? Like manufactured perceptions about space travel, Quakers and Australians, certain ideas about “geeks” are being used by marketers to take advantage of the public’s interest in them.

Problem is, geekdom was a fad in itself, and the word “geek” has changed so much in the last 20 years that our comeuppance has been subverted to the point to where we don’t recognize it. It’s not about us anymore. It’s about a group of people pretending to be what they thought we were. All sorts of people, especially computer salespeople, have a need to adopt this new image of geekishness.

It’s ironic that a whole lot of marketing depends on our solid Intranet infrastructure. An infrastructure conceived, built and maintained by—you guessed it—real geeks. Only independent, self-absorbed geeks could have designed a network system so decentralized that governments, mega-corporations, and even market forces couldn’t contain its growth or control its administration.

So where are they? Where are the real geeks? Why don’t we ever see them?

Oh, no, wait! I found some! In plain view on YouTube!

If the above video makes you feel cozy inside, or even the least bit excited about Fourier transforms, welcome, you’ve found your people. If, instead, you find yourself sadly shaking your head, I guess we’ll see you at the next school dance. But you won’t see us.

I spend most of my time either explaining the importance of or helping corporate America build a true web presence, rather than just having a website. Really, just building a website gets you nowhere quickly. In order to be successful online, you have to build a web presence. In the next few days, I will be posting a series of steps on how to capitalize your web activity to get noticed by your consumer. The three steps needed to successfully build a web presence are to analyze, to optimize and then to particize (formerly known as participate - this stuff needs to ryhme).

Today I will start with what you can do to analyze your brand’s and category’s web presence. Before you make any changes to your web strategy, or spend a single dollar on focus groups, here are a few ideas that should garner tremendous immediate learning for you:

•  Set up automatic feed searches for your company, products and competitors names on sites such as Google News and Feedster

• Stay up-to-date on what customers are saying about your products and services on popular review sites such as Amazon

• Analyze your web traffic and figure out what keywords people are using to find your website, products or services

• Read relevant posts or comments on blogs

• Monitor popular forums relevant to your category

• Are people uploading videos relevant to your products or categories on You Tube?

• Are people uploading pictures of your products on Flickr?

There are many things that you could, and should be doing, that might be specific to your category. The trick is to just get started and begin learning. My next entry in this series will be on how to optimize your web presence.

Featured below is the latest viral campaign from Dove. If you recall, Dove put out an amazing commercial last year (winning numerous awards along the way, including the prestigious Grand Prix awards at Cannes) that was called “Evolution.” This was one of the first, and surely the biggest, campaign to start out virally and, due to such incredible success, move to become an actual broadcast commercial.

When I first saw “Evolution” I was happy—finally, some company was showing the world what happens to these ads (we’re TOLD all the time. but how often are we SHOWN?). Their manipulation and distortion is borderline sickening, and we continue to wonder why our rates of eating disorders keep going up, and our children’s self-esteem continues to go down?

While “Evolution” was poignant, Dove’s latest ad, “Onslaught,” is decidedly a bit more in-your-face, and I like it. As anyone who has hung around teenage girls knows, it is extremely frustrating to watch these (beautiful, smart!) girls look up to people like Paris Hilton and dress in outfits that should only be relegated for Halloween costumes (when they’re 25!).  Since when did being skinny and pretty become our barometer of a happy woman?

But young teenagers and pre-teens are not the only perpetrators of this lifestyle. We, as adults, are equally to blame. We look at those ads, we actually buy those high-priced items, and we alter our beauty images as those periodicals dictate to us.  What we CAN do is alter the way we respond to things. Unfortunately, mass change will not happen overnight, but as an individual we can certainly work toward change in our society. It’s hard to be a woman today—no one denies that—but we cannot let ourselves be held down by a cloak of blame.

This Dove campaign by Ogilvy & Mather is another great step toward shifting people’s ideas. Men and women alike shouldn’t see these magazine ads as “hot,” they should see them for what they are: apparitions that only serve to act as inhibitors for our younger generations.

It’s time to reverse the current trends—now.