How To Monetize Twitter - Update

Sell the real time generated data. Keyword data.

Real Time Data = $

Real Time Search ads = $

What about sponsored tweets? Commercial accounts? Possible e-commerce tie-in?

Issues: Will sponsored tweets piss the Twitter community off? Probably.

Protecting Your Online IP

Intellectual property (IP) are legal property rights over creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial, and the corresponding fields of law. Common types of intellectual property include copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets. (WikiPedia)

If you have an innovative, brilliant Marketing campaign(s) or Strategy and you want to tell the world about them (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, conferences) you may want to think again. It’s called “competitive advantage” and you want to keep it “close to the cuff” as much as possible. Why? So your competitors won’t jump on your coattails and follow the same tactic. Why would you want to give out your marketing strategies? Ego perhaps, or to generate traffic to your blogs, corporate website or increase your Twitter following? Forget it. Again, think about your competitors and think about your sales or services business.

*This blog entry is for most companies or service oriented businesses and not necessarily for marketing blogs (like mine) that give out basic online marketing strategy.

Here are some important tips for making sure your ideas are preserved. I have only listed a few but there are many more safeguards that can be set up in the “process”:

1. Create a policy. Establish a policy for all of your intellectual property - including all patents, logos, designs, trademarks, copyrights and domain names. Policy comes first. Give yourself a competitive advantage. Just because you think there’s no competition out there for your business, don’t use that as an argument not to spend the money to protect your idea.
2. Keep all marketing strategy and reports under a "red cover" confidential. If the IP is printed on hard copy, always have a red cover sheet up front to remind everyone that this information is confidential. If you’re marketing strategy (or IP) is distributed by email or document files, make sure everyone one on your team knows and writes (sig file) "confidential". Clearly label sensitive data as "confidential" (or put a "watermark" right on the document), and explicitly state this fact in your email. Perhaps go as far as hold a team/staff meeting and explain the fact that if ANY confidential strategy IP gets outside of the company, that person will be fired. It works for Steve Jobs. Example of setting up a confidential watermark in MS-Word below.
3. Copyright. Have you written an article, eBook, created a video or made a podcast? You'll want copyright protection. Once you have created the work, you have the exclusive right to reproduce, adapt, distribute, perform and display it.
4. Trademark/Service mark. Got a logo or tagline you want to use? Look into trademark protection. Service marks provide the same protection for intangible things such as services.
5. Nondisclosure Agreements (NDA). A common approach is to make sure that anyone you share the IP information………..signs a “nondisclosure agreement” (NDA) prior to your disclosure. Typical NDAs contractually obligate signatories to refrain from disclosing confidential information without the disclosing party’s express consent.
6. If you have client newsletters or email blasts, do not go into details of your marketing strategy. Leave that for your face-to-face meetings.

With marketing strategy, be very guarded. Share your strategy on a need-to-know basis, and make sure everyone with access understands the importance of keeping this information confidential.

Las Vegas Social Media Review Take Aways

1. Luxor was the winner with an A+ in Social Media, although, still lacking a Facebook fan page. Correction: Luxor has a Facebook page!
   
2. Venetian was the winner with an A+ in SEO.
3. Only Luxor & Stratosphere have a corporate blog (astonishing).
4. The Luxor scored an A+ with a corporate blog, twitter account and MySpace page but the other MGM MIRAGE Property "MGM Grand" did not = which leads me to believe that each MGM MIRAGE property has its own PR & Marketing department making their own decisions. This good or bad.
5. Most, if not all hotel "dance clubs" or lounges have a social media presence (especially on MySpace and Facebook) = which leads me to believe that either the "dance clubs" are under different ownership and management or their marketing/Promo department is of younger demographics that pushes social media.
6. Hotels such as the Riviera, Sahara, Rio, Fitzgerald's, Hooters, Red Rock have virtually no official social media presence. This could be due to older, less flexible management with an inability to change or add social media marketing tactics to their marketing arsenal.
7. The Venetian rocked both Social Media and SEO grades. The Venetian marketing & PR department is very Internet "aware" and they "get it". They show up #1 in Vegas hotel Google searches = this is due to their online presence (Facebook, MySpace pages) that helps in organic search rankings. They also participate in PPC for the words Las Vegas Hotel(s) and much more.
8. Las Vegas hotels (in general) seem to be a little behind in the Social Media marketing realm. This surprises me as Las Vegas is built around entertainment.
9. A few of the hotels are owned under one umbrella corporation, yet the use of Social Media is erratic at best. Not practicing a unified online marketing strategy.
10. Planet Hollywood is by far the best Facebook fan page built by a Vegas hotel. Not only is it updated frequently, they use the fan page medium for special promotions and hotel room discounts.