Adam-Jackson

I joined Twitter in late 2006 and gave up after a few months because I didn’t see a use for it. I rejoined later (March 21st, 2007) and since then it’s been a wild ride! Well, in the past 18 months, I’ve had the chance to work with some amazing companies and have helped all of them “tweet better”. My skills have improved and now I’m going to do this as a side project.

TweetForMyBiz is a service dedicated to helping companies listen to their audience, generate sales and be a part of the conversation without hiring a dedicated marketing team or social media expert. Because sometimes a Twitter voice is all you need, this service allows you to get these results for a very low price.

Why am I doing this? First of all, I’m always at my computer from 8AM-9PM daily and second of all, I have a custom dashboard that makes this very very easy and the last thing is that I love meeting and helping people over the web. I happen to be very good at customer support. This is a total side-project and something I enjoy doing. I already have a healthy roster of clients that are using the service and I hope to add more in the coming months.

Without making this a huge blog post, I suggest you click through and check out http://tweetformybiz.com.

As many of you know, I’m writing a book with Dominic. He and I have been hard at work since we verbally and legally committed to this back in November of 2008. He and I have an agent and hopefully some good news coming soon regarding the progress of the book. All of this aside, I’ve learned a few things so far when writing a book.

• Writing a book is the complete opposite of blogging.
• You’ll write something and then re-write it over 50 times
• You will learn to respect the red pen
• You will fall in love with the thesaurus
• Ever had a passionate work of art critiqued by 50 people? It Sucks
• You’ll value the time you get to sleep and the time you get to step away from the computer

Amidst all of these things, when a chapter is complete and you pour a cup of tea, print out the chapter, close your laptop, recline in a chair and start reading; it’s a beautiful thing. A raw stone you found in the woods has now been turned into a beautiful work of art and you quickly realize the dedication part of your book doesn’t have enough space to thank everyone who made this possible.

I will learn many more lessons in the coming months but I’m stoked now more than ever to be working on this project with a terrific friend and with the support of  my family. This is going to be a wild ride!

A month ago, I announced that a partnership between me and Snobby Slice Web Design was going to happen for 2 weeks. Here are the terms of the advertising agreement:

• Four Tweets every day. 9AM, 12Noon, 3PM, 6PM.
• Four different advertisements a day all mentioning SnobbySlice.com and @snobbyslice.
• Contract Was for 2 Weeks
• Change my Twitter Background to a Snobby Slice Advertisement

When we first started, SnobbySlice.com has just launched and @SnobbySlice had zero Twitter followers. I started the program with only 2,332 followers on my account. At the time when I posted a link, it would average 55 clicks according to Bit.ly with a norma minimum of 30 clicks and a max of 100 clicks. Here are the findings of this project:

• @SnobbySlice’s Twitter account which was clearly commercial acquired 163 Followers
• Their Twitter account only tweeted 102 times in 2 weeks and most of there were conversation (@replies)
• Their website didn’t see thousands of clicks via Twitter, in fact most of their site traffic came from direct hits and Google Searches
• Their site reached #1 on Google for “Snobby Slice” and “SnobbySlice“
• This week, 5 days after I stopped the ads, they were recommended by Three different Twitter users for #followfriday
• I actually gained followers from 2,332 at the start of the project to 2,514 at the end of the 2 weeks. See that stats here.
• There was a clear drop in visitors to their site once the advertising partnership ended.

Here are some other notes:

• I had friends at Twitter that warned me that my acount may be suspended if I continue this advertising
• Prefacing my tweets with #advertisement reduced user complaints and increased clicks
• I warned my followers 4 times and via a blog entry that I would be doing advertising 2 weeks before the program started.
• I changed up the ads where the first week I had 4 unique text ads. 2 users complained about repetition and that I should change it up (not to stop the ads though) so I got @SnobbySlice to do 4 more text ads for me.
• In total, 4 complaints were logged regarding my advertisements. No one publicly said they would stop following me and all complaints were over DM (Direct Message)
• The advertisements were retweeted 4 times in the 2 weeks which I find very interesting.
• I received advertising inquiries from 5 other companies to do advertising (I declined).

Financially, Snobby Slice paid me $250 for a 2 week terms for advertising. At 4 Tweets per day, that equals $4.50 per tweet which is $4 less than sites like Magpie offers based on my follower count. I donated the proceeds to cancer research at the beginning of the project because this was not a financial money making scheme for me and I was merely doing this to see how the program went and what kind of user reaction would come from these kind of advertisements.

Despite being against Twitter’s TOS and grounds for an account suspension, companies should look at Twitter as a viable way to advertise their business. Snobby Slice took a chance and I’d call it a success for the money they spent. Here are some notes from my contact there:

• “We have been quiet about the site, so Twitter was really the only outlet advertising the site
• The clickthrough from Twitter was horrible. However, I lot of that traffic must have been direct as the graph shows. That means the people who saw the link on Twitter didn’t click on it, but remembered the brand in their head and typed it in their browser later. Better brand recognition, and they REMEMBER us! You can’t buy that anywhere else.
• We made good partnerships on Twitter with other users/content creators.
• Would do it again in a heartbeat.”

Thanks guys for taking a chance with this and thanks for my followers for being great guinea pigs for this experiment. You can follow me on Twitter as @adamjackson or @thebook.

I’ve been lacking on a few things lately. One of those is parties. I haven’t attended tech events as much as I was. I’m not tired of parties. In fact, I totally love parties, tech events, happy hours and mixers. I miss everyone but I’ve been pretty busy. The other thing is that I wanted to blog every day but that hasn’t happened much easier but quality of quantity is a good excuse for that. I like writing things out as to what I’m currently working on so I figured I would write out what I’m currently working on for you all see.

• Yoono: helping them with the community, evangelizing their product and lately I’ve been helping them plan events such as Twiistup and SXSW.
• Twitter Book: Dom and I have multiple publishers lined up and we’re taking things 1 chapter at a time while also trying to develop an iPhone app.
• Social Media Consulting: I have 1 client and 3 more prospects. I’m hoping I can do some short term work for these companies in the near future.
• AdamsBlock: I’m helping the new owner with AdamsBlock. I’m not officially involved on a pay basis but I’m helping this guy out part time.
• Teens in Tech: I’m “technically” the President of Teens in Tech right now in place for Daniel Brusilovsky while he focuses on school.
• Agent: I just signed on with a talent agent to help me secure more speaking engagements and assist in the Twitter book things.
• Project Homeless Connect: Working with my friend Katrina on some homeless outreach activities and trying to get some social media coverage for the work we’re doing in order to get more volunteers.
• Super Secret Stuff: This is the stuff that I’m publicly involved in but there’s 3 more secret things that I’m working on.

I wanted to apologize to everyone involved with the things that I listed above. You’ve all seen 15% of Adam for the past 2 months. I want to give you all 100% but I’m doing a few things at once. This explains my 3 days a week of not sleeping and working 18 hour days. I’m in love with everything that I do and you wouldn’t believe that only 1 of these things actually pays at the moment. I’m cultivating a lot of fun projects that might make money one day. I’m working on tax returns tonight and coming to the realization that I made almost no money last year. Let’s hope 2009 is a better year and some of these projects come to a reality.

Last week, I was invited along with a few other bloggers for a national AMC theatres promotion where they show all five films that are nominated for The Oscars’ 2009 Best Picture award. I’m excited to be joining bloggers from all over the US to take part in this. With the help of AMC, I’ll be blogging throughout the day, sending photos to Flickr, blog posts to this blog and posts to Facebook and Twitter.

In San Francisco, I’m joined by the following bloggers:

• Krystyl (@krystyl)
• Brittany (@brit)
• Giannii (@Giannii)
• Brock Kneeling (SFist)
• Dave Morin (@davemorin)

This day long showcase of the 5 Oscar nominees takes place in Los Angeles, Toronto, Denver, Atlanta, Toronto and St. Louis among other cities. The price for a ticket is only $30. Here’s the press release and schedule.

ALL OSCAR®, ALL DAY LONG:   AMC ENTERTAINMENT® PRESENTS A SINGLE-DAY SHOWING OF ALL FIVE “BEST  PICTURE”  FILMS
Tickets On Sale Jan. 30; New  Discount for AMC  MovieWatcher Members
Kansas City, Mo. (Jan. 30, 2009) – AMC Entertainment Inc.  (AMC),  one of the world’s largest and most innovative theatrical exhibition   companies, is proud to offer guests the rare opportunity to experience  all  five motion pictures nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture  Arts and  Sciences for “Best Picture,” on one special day.
On  Saturday, Feb. 21, the  AMC Best Picture ShowcaseSM will take  place at approximately 97 AMC  theatres in 42 North American markets*  (check local listings for availability  and show times). Guests can  purchase an exclusive AMC Best Picture Showcase  All-Day Pass for only  $30, or just $25 for AMC MovieWatcher® members.  Moviegoers will have  the chance to see all five Oscar®-nominated “Best  Picture” films and  will also receive a large popcorn with unlimited refills  for the  entire day. This offer is valued at more than $50 and marks the third   year of this exclusive event.
The Oscar® “Best Picture” nominees,  “Milk,”  “The Reader,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Slumdog  Millionaire” and  “Frost/Nixon,” will play in one dedicated auditorium  back-to-back throughout  the day. Upon arrival to the theatre, guests  will receive a souvenir lanyard,  which will feature artwork from the  five nominated films and give guests the  freedom to come and go  throughout the event as they please.
Guests can  locate a theatre  hosting AMC Best Picture Showcase in their area by visiting   www.amctheatres.com. Advance ticket sales will be available by noon  C.S.T. on  Friday, Jan. 30, on a first-come, first-served basis online  at  www.amctheatres.com <http://www.amctheatres.com/>    or by visiting the box office or Guest Services area at any  theatre  hosting the AMC Best Picture Showcase.
AMC Best  Picture Showcase  schedule (all times local; schedule is the  same  nationwide):

Schedule

Milk, 10:30am –12:50 pm
The Reader, 1:05 – 3:19 pm
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 3:45-6:43pm
Slumdog Millionaire, 7:15 – 9:27 pm
Frost/Nixon, 9:45 – 11:59 pm

Not bad for $30. I know it’s a long day but the pass means you can come and go all day if you want to skip out to grab lunch. I’ll be there all day because all of these films are amazing. If you want to join up with me and other bloggers in San Francisco or nationwide, CLICK HERE to buy your tickets. I’m super excited and hope you all will tune in the day of. Here are the places I’ll be doing live coverage.

• This Blog
• My Twitter
• My Flickr
• My FriendFeed
• AMCBPS Flickr Group
• #AMCBPS ON TWITTER

The official Hashtag for this event is #AMCBPS