The Reel Motion Blog

Let’s get one thing straight: the power of Twitter is personal, relevant interactions / conversations. This power is inversely related to how many people you follow, because how many people can a single human really keep up with? Maybe a few hundred? Therefore, having 10 bazillion followers that you also follow is pointless, unless you just want to spam. This flies in the face of most other social networks where having more friends is considered “good,” or at least tolerable. And that’s where the logic breaks down when people develop tools like TweeterGetter.

TweeterGetter is basically a follower pyramid scheme where once you sign up you follow the last five people in the system and then as more people sign up underneath (after) you you gain more and more followers. Apparently up to 15k in “Level 5.”

But for what?

What could you possibly find useful about talking to 15k strangers at once? And how many of them are going to have the time to read any of their tweets, since they’re in the system as well and probably overwhelmed with thousands of followers of their own? It all boils down to a system designed around the broken idea that more followers / friends / etc is better.

It’s not about the quantity, but quality.

So please, do us, and everyone on Twitter a favor and avoid services like TweeterGetter like the plague.

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Reel Motion Media Inc., is a Video & Web Marketing company that understands how to maximize your company’s exposure in the internet of tomorrow. Reel Motion has full video production capabilities and an experienced web marketing staff that will make every dollar of your budget count, even if your budget is only a dollar. Contact them today at info@reelmotioninc.com for more information on taking your company to the next level.

If I was a betting man, I’d say that those who predict the end of the world in 2012 are way off. The end of civilization as we know it will occur on a cold night in Chicago, sometime later this spring.

Remember that remix of the Snuggie commercial we post a few weeks ago?

Well, the Snuggie craze hasn’t slowed down at all. In fact, if you’re in Chicago you might want to head over to what is sure to be the warmest pub crawl ever held there during winter: you guessed it, a Snuggie Pub Crawl.

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Reel Motion Media Inc., is a Video & Web Marketing company that understands how to maximize your company’s exposure in the internet of tomorrow. Reel Motion has full video production capabilities and an experienced web marketing staff that will make every dollar of your budget count, even if your budget is only a dollar. Contact them today at info@reelmotioninc.com for more information on taking your company to the next level.

With great power comes great responsibility. It was true in the movies and it’s true in real life. Case in point is Twitterhawk, a service that doesn’t just return search results for terms on Twitter, but replies (via your account) with some canned response. It can even be set to only respond to those within a certain radius of your location so that people talking about NY style pizza in Florida don’t get a response about your Colorado location. Pretty smart, pretty scary.

One of the biggest differentiators about Twitter is that it’s more personal than other social media networks. Something about the brevity of 140 characters has brought out the human in all of us. Or maybe it’s because there isn’t a profile space for you to detail your life history. In any case, Twitter is all about being authentic and for non-human entities, having a human behind the wheel. Twitterhawk is a step away from that.

Does that mean it will fail? Far from it. I can imagine a service like Twitterhawk being an important tool in any sort of Twitter campaign, especially when you’re dealing with more followers and responses than a human could ever handle. But maybe that’s the idea behind Twitter–it’s set up to scale to the point that a human can handle it–but no more. Perhaps Twitterhawk will become an after-hours tool among businesses looking to have a Twitter presence after the 9-5. It’s hard to tell at this point, but probably worth keeping in your back pocket in case it happens to fit into your next Twitter plan.

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Reel Motion Media Inc., is a Video & Web Marketing company that understands how to maximize your company’s exposure in the internet of tomorrow. Reel Motion has full video production capabilities and an experienced web marketing staff that will make every dollar of your budget count, even if your budget is only a dollar. Contact them today at info@reelmotioninc.com for more information on taking your company to the next level.

Virtue releases it’s list of the Top 100 Social Brands. I’m not really sure how they determined the list, but there’s certainly a few for discussion on there. A lot of these feel based on word of mouth rather than digital conversations as you might expect. What brands surprise you or which ones aren’t there that you think should be?

One that stuck out for me: Sega. As in Sega Genesis. What exactly are they doing that’s so social?

1. iPhone
2. CNN
3. Apple
4. Disney
5. Xbox
6. Starbucks
7. iPod
8. MTV
9. Sony
10. Dell
11. Microsoft
12. Ford
13. Nintendo
14. Target
15. PlayStation
16. Mac
17. Turner
18. Hewlett-Packard
19. Fox News
20. BlackBerry
21. ABC
22. Coke
23. LG
24. Best Buy
25. Honda
26. eBay
27. Sharp
28. Lincoln
29. NBA
30. Pepsi
31. General Motors
32. McDonald’s
33. General Electric
34. Walmart
35. NFL
36. Mercedes
37. BMW
38. Samsung
39. Nike
40. Subway
41. Dodge
42. Pandora
43. CBS
44. Mercury
45. NBC
46. Disneyland
47. last.fm
48. Toyota
49. Cadillac
50. Chevy
51. Jeep
52. Netflix
53. Nascar
54. Suzuki
55. Red Bull
56. Wendy’s
57. Burger King
58. Volkswagen
59. REI
60. Nissan
61. T-Mobile
62. Verizon
63. Macy’s
64. AT&T
65. Guess
66. Victoria’s Secret
67. Walt Disney World
68. Audi
69. TBS
70. Cartoon Network
71. IKEA
72. SEGA
73. Kia
74. Porsche
75. Fox
76. Intel
77. IBM
78. VH1
79. MLB
80. Cisco
81. Oracle
82. Saturn
83. Sprite
84. Subaru
85. Adidas
86. BP
87. AMC
88. Chili’s
89. The Gap
90. Capital One
91. Hyatt
92. Costco
93. KFC
94. Adult Swim
95. Jet Blue
96. Taco Bell
97. Converse
98. Sirius
99. Puma
100. Sears

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Reel Motion Media Inc., is a Video & Web Marketing company that understands how to maximize your company’s exposure in the internet of tomorrow. Reel Motion has full video production capabilities and an experienced web marketing staff that will make every dollar of your budget count, even if your budget is only a dollar. Contact them today at info@reelmotioninc.com for more information on taking your company to the next level.

There’s something about Twitter that just begs people to love it. It probably has a lot to do with the brevity and personal nature of Twitter (who am I kidding, of course that’s it.) But probably the most interesting thing to me is people’s fascination with making Twitter more than just an online network.

Enter Twestival.

It’s, you guessed it, a Twitter festival. But rather than being 100 dorky dudes sitting on laptops in a Starbucks as you might have first thought, it’s actually a world wide effort to bring people together for a good cause. As of now there will be over 140 Twestivals around the world on Februrary 12th, each with the goal to raise $4,000 for the charity:water group. $4,000 is enough to create one water well in a developing nation. It’s going to be very interesting to see how this all works out.

One thing to note is that I can’t recall facebook or myspace ever having this sort of grass-roots, member-lead community organization feel to it. Sure, facebook has those “for every person who joins this group I’ll donate a dollar to…” groups, but there’s not a lot of accountability there. And they typically didn’t lead to a real-life meetup. If Twitter continues to gain traction in connecting people digitally and then having the power to bring them together physically facebook and myspace had better take notice. An online social network that also turns into a social network will have serious clout in the coming years.

Of course, one question still nagging me about Twestival is: Will there be any funnel cakes?

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Reel Motion Media Inc., is a Video & Web Marketing company that understands how to maximize your company’s exposure in the internet of tomorrow. Reel Motion has full video production capabilities and an experienced web marketing staff that will make every dollar of your budget count, even if your budget is only a dollar. Contact them today at info@reelmotioninc.com for more information on taking your company to the next level.

The Denver Egotist reports:

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) has just put out a report that warns, “advertising agencies face growth of just 1.2 per cent a year by 2016 if the industry fails to tackle the changes to the media created by sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.”

In case it isn’t clear yet, the future is digital. The future is about how brands will listen as well as talk. Those who embrace this will find a lot of opportunity in coming years. Those who don’t will continue to grumble while the world changes around them.

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Reel Motion Media Inc., is a Video & Web Marketing company that understands how to maximize your company’s exposure in the internet of tomorrow. Reel Motion has full video production capabilities and an experienced web marketing staff that will make every dollar of your budget count, even if your budget is only a dollar. Contact them today at info@reelmotioninc.com for more information on taking your company to the next level.

Mashable talks to 40 of the best brands using Twitter to see just how and why they are there. Interesting to see how every brand takes a different approach. Mashable goes on to say:

Smart brands use Twitter in meaningful ways, and most of them use their brand name as a way to make sure customers can find and recognize them. This piece, and the knowledge I learned from the incessant hours invested, demonstrate why brands do belong on Twitter. No other medium gets you inside a business or brand quiet like Twitter.

I tend to agree. There’s something altogether different about the Twitter medium that makes it a great place for customer / brand interaction to take place. It’s more conversational and timely than a blog and I think that’s been a key to it’s popularity. As more and more users sign up for Twitter I predict that users will expect a brand to have an account, just like how people expected a business to have a website in the mid 90′s. Note to businesses: ignore this at your own peril.

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Reel Motion Media Inc., is a Video & Web Marketing company that understands how to maximize your company’s exposure in the internet of tomorrow. Reel Motion has full video production capabilities and an experienced web marketing staff that will make every dollar of your budget count, even if your budget is only a dollar. Contact them today at info@reelmotioninc.com for more information on taking your company to the next level.

Would you sacrifice 10 of your Facebook friends for a flame grilled whopper? That’s the question the Whopper Sacrifice Facebook App asks you. If you indeed decide to get rid of 10 of your friends not only will they be informed that as much as you like them, you love the whopper, but you’ll also get a coupon for a free whopper for yourself.

Adweek weighs in saying that this might be the first Facebook app actually based on some research into people’s habits on Facebook. Apparently the folks over at Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Boulder, CO realized that many of them indeed had way too many Facebook friend that they really didn’t know that well.

That’s a smart insight that led to what I’m predicting will be a hit on Facebook. Plus, it might actually do something good for the Facebook community as it reduces the number of “random friends” and leaves you with a smaller, arguably more valuable network. When you’re familiar with your target market and immerse yourself in their world it’s amazing the insights you get.

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Reel Motion Media Inc., is a Video & Web Marketing company that understands how to maximize your company’s exposure in the internet of tomorrow. Reel Motion has full video production capabilities and an experienced web marketing staff that will make every dollar of your budget count, even if your budget is only a dollar. Contact them today at info@reelmotioninc.com for more information on taking your company to the next level.

Wondering which mega-corporations are using Twitter to connect with their customers? Search Engine Journal has compiled a list of 16. Some of the names include Dell, Kodak, Home Depot, Starbucks, Popeyes and Comcast among others.

The interesting thing is that they all use Twitter a little differently. Some provide customer support. Some answer questions. Some promote their corporate blog. Some provide coupons.

How does (will) your company use Twitter?

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Reel Motion Media Inc., is a Video & Web Marketing company that understands how to maximize your company’s exposure in the internet of tomorrow. Reel Motion has full video production capabilities and an experienced web marketing staff that will make every dollar of your budget count, even if your budget is only a dollar. Contact them today at info@reelmotioninc.com for more information on taking your company to the next level.

A tough question considering how widely used the term is anymore.

Seth Godin tackles the question in a recent post and sums it up to this:

Viral marketing is an idea that spreads–and an idea that while it is spreading actually helps market your business or cause.

Read the rest of Seth’s analysis on his blog, but let’s stop and think about this for a second. Viral marketing isn’t just something that spreads. The Youtube vid with 20 billion million views? Not viral, unless it helped market your business or cause. And that’s the trick: not just spreading, but growing your business as well.

Something to consider before you declare your latest “viral” effort a success. Sure, views are nice, but actions and results are what you really should be aiming for.

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Reel Motion Media Inc., is a Video & Web Marketing company that understands how to maximize your company’s exposure in the internet of tomorrow. Reel Motion has full video production capabilities and an experienced web marketing staff that will make every dollar of your budget count, even if your budget is only a dollar. Contact them today at info@reelmotioninc.com for more information on taking your company to the next level.