Back in early November I wrote a post about my experience using Twitter to connect with people in China. At the time I had just spent a couple of months really focusing on the site and my network. Prior to that, I had been using it sparingly and had not truly considered the possibilities.

"The more you put into it, the more you get out of it." - social media. If you don't consider what it is you want to achieve or take time to think of how you want to do this, you will probably FAIL. Its like going to a Networking mtg and not talking to anyone or giving out a business card or two and then returning to the office declaring it a waste of time.

I decided I had 4 points to consider:

1. Grow existing connections and new relationships within the graphic arts industry
2. Learn from, and educate, others in the online marketing community
3. Create awareness and demand for Kodak B2B technology
4. Engage and excite people about creativity in print

I am happy with my progress to date on the first 3 points and decided that I needed to focus on the 4th point for a while.

Working for Kodak affords me an almost endless supply of leading edge products to talk about. From the Kodak ZX1 pocket video to the amazing developments in high volume inkjet we call Prosper, I could spend the rest of the year talking about revenue generating ideas and differentiating yourself from the competition with Kodak.

But lets just take it 50 tweets at a time shall we...

For my first attempt at a Tweet Campaign, I chose the Kodak Nexpress and the dimensional ink solution. It allows you to 'add feeling to print'. Unlike raised ink from long ago, dimensional ink can be 'controlled'. The first time I saw felt it, I stated to those around me that if I was still doing print creative, "I could come up with 50 ideas for this in a heartbeat".

I decided that, pumping out one amusing or potential use for it each day would be fairly easy and would help me cover points 1,2,3 and add focus on point 4.

For 50 days I posted a potential use of Kodak dimensional ink and how it could truly differentiate yourself and your client. I actually thought of one each morning over a coffee - live without a net...on the net! Some im quite proud of like the use of Braille, the fake 'wax seal, the cheque holders for restaurants, the individually themed menus for each restaurant tables...its quite fun doing this and im confident it ads value for the people that follow me.



Success.

Several people asked me about the technology, each day people 'RT'd' posts or messaged me as to where they could get it done or more information about it. Some Kodak Nexpress owners received inquiries everywhere from Ottawa, New Jersey to Wellington New Zealand and Mumbai, India.

People discovered that it was for Commercial printing and not a Kodak AIO printer, as amusing as these conversations were, it showed that I had informed more people about the breadth of our commercial products.

Two actual Kodak Nexpress owners sent ideas in for me to tweet. Some consumer oriented Kodak employees even suggested ideas for the technology.

A Kodak customer from India asked for templates to try the idea from a blog I did last year.
2 digital printers have since demo'd the Nexpress.

From a marketing communications perspective, it was a success. With print followers on Twitter seeing the support the Kodak team enjoys providing to its Customers. It added credibility to our statement, helping customers grow their business and some of the ideas made people smile!

A search on Google for Kodak dimensional ink showed that my twitter account had risen to the top 10 results page - even after I had completed the campaign over 8 weeks ago.



Hmmm...what will happen with live search and ports like Google?

...if I were to research a new product and the search results showed 5 static sites with mostly outdated content - or 3 or 4 live links to employees on a social network that I am already a part of...I would choose the live ones. Consider where this will take the internet in the next 24 months.

I have since reposted an idea or two each week and have translated the ideas into Chinese language for posting on local sites here in China. I actually repost the ideas a few times each week on twitter, and they still get retweeted like it was new.



Creativity has been and will always be the true game changer for companies, technology and people. Business just needs to listen!

These days, launching a marketing campaign is getting easier and harder to do successfully...millions of radio stations, millions of tv stations, millions of websites...

It tough getting your message into the hands and minds of your markets...really tough if you decide to forget print or choose one channel.

The effort you make on strategy makes all the difference. Its pretty easy to:
produce a banner ad - get a traffic report - slap a PPT together for the Boss.

• Drop a brochure in the mail and wait for a response.
• Have an event and invite the people you know will show up and you knew were in buying mode already.
• Execute the safe.

Doing the same thing repeatedly is what a robot does really well, if this sounds like you...its time to be a little more organic.

Robots have yet to replace the left brain and right brain working together - information and creativity. Understanding how to be effective is crucial. Having a team that can execute your vision is, of course, beneficial. Multi-touch marketing campaigns are effective and help make your brand stand out in a crowd.

P

You are a marketer living in a world with print technology we could only dream about 10 years ago and couldn't even imagine 20 years ago. Why would you throw this opportunity away? Because everything is online? Don't believe everything u read on the Internet, (except this blog), most of them are still learning what a fact checker is. Print is highly effective, if you take the time to develop a strategy.

Today we have photo quality, variable data, short run printing with a host of options including, Kodak dimensional ink , 60+ megapixel digital camera backs and printers connected across the globe. If your message is targeted and relevant, print will get their undivided attention.

No one reads an email or listens to a voice ad the same way they read your printed, personalized message - its in their hands and for the moment - has their undivided attention. Add Kodak dimensional ink and they can feel the difference your product could make. No one gets an error 401 when they turn a page in your book and no one gets a virus from viewing your product photos. If you are trying to build relationships, print can add trust to your message.

Statements to be mailed? Don't forget to include transpromo in your campaign, it's a low cost method to add personalisation and exclusivity to the project - ask @patmcgrew on twitter.

When I get a piece of mail from a company...and they get it right - it leaves a stamp.

O

Getting a response online that counts for something is tough. Do the million hits pay the rent? ...or are you selling lots of Viagra.

How many people go to a shopping cart on a website, but leave before they check out? Does that actually happen at a real store? I don't see too many shopping carts half-full piling up in front of the checkout - but it happens allot online. These kind of statistics are more important than the usual hits and views report - make sure you get this information from your web master and make changes to the process to improve your checkout totals.

Ask your marketing department or ask a printer about pURLs....- 'personalized URLs'. For pennies per name in your database you can have a unique domain name printed on each piece. Its been proven the world over that it drives response rates into double digit territory.

E

Salespeople love events - the people that visit are usually in research or buying mode and are open to discuss plans. For a sales person, its easier to have a prospect come to them, then to face rejection over the phone or in person.

There aren't too many experiences that top an in-person meeting. But a video testimonial? This can potentially trump an event or site visit - especially if it goes VIRAL. Viral become the holy grail of aspiring marketing rockstars. But 'going viral' is rare - do something that you can manage a good response from - try keeping track of all the people that visit your event or booth and mail a printed variable data booklet for them after the show - with their photo on the cover. Most marketers hope to do something that catches on and goes viral, but fail to include a follow-up plan to handle the volume of response. In the end your brand suffers.

If you are maintaining your database and supporting your 'creative engine', you could leverage this opportunity online with a little help from a Pocket video camera (Kodak makes really good ones) and a social media site like Twitter or Facebook .

Call it 'word of mouse', if you cannot meet and greet all those prospects and valued customers at an event, get them to sign up to twitter or facebook and keep in touch with them online. A couple hours of effective use of social media each week is probably better than a week of internal email strife. Mailing a brochure or sending a monthly enewsletter is ok, but they dont build relationships like social media.

M

Your graphic designer and marketing guru(s) have written sparkling copy and created jaw dropping imagery and you convinced a key customer to provide a video testimonial at your event. Finally, you managed to get 100 prospects to follow your every movement on twitter. You just might have the ingredients for a multimedia stew you can deliver online with a campaign microsite. Targeted sites get high search rankings for free because they answer the google question correctly. Do not take the site down when the campaign is over - the internet is not very forgiving. Leave the site up and make note on the site that your offer has expired. If it's a subdomain it costs you nothing, but you retain the search potential.

With so many possibilities, its good to find a way to remember things...

Print, Online, Event and Multimedia = POEM.

If you mis-spell it, you will regret it.

I don't have to tell you about negative pressure on pricing and margins. That we all know too well. The latest NAPL State of the Industry Report shows a record decline in commercial printing industry sales of 12 to 14 percent this year. While a modest recovery is being predicted for 2010, NAPL believes there will still be downward pressure on pricing. Add that to print services being increasing commoditized, and it's more important than ever to identify opportunities to reduce costs as a way to improve profitability. A sure fire way to do that is by integrating and further automating what are now independent systems to increase efficiency, and in doing so, drive down costs and grow the bottom line.

To that end, we've provided a unique set of easy to use interactive tools and resources to help you learn about what others are doing and find your own areas for improvement. Sure, we have a name for all of this—MeasureYourBiz.

Central to all of this is Kodak's Unified Workflow Discovery Tool. We're going to show you how to use this online, interactive tool so you can examine the areas of your business step-by-step to see how simplifying and streamlining your workflow will:

• improve production efficiencies
• control costs
• provide real time return on investment.

Interested? Join us for one of the upcoming educational webinars led by Jim Aust, Business Analyst, Kodak. With more than 15 years experience in the industry, Jim will use specific examples taken from his 150 visits to print shops each year. He will share with you his findings in helping these shops benchmark against industry standards and best practices, and how they turned those comparisons into action to benefit their businesses.

The MeasureYourBiz webinars will take place at 1 p.m. EDT on:

• Wednesday, Nov. 4
• Wednesday, Nov. 18

To register, and also watch a video preview of the webinars, visit: www.kodak.com/go/measureyourbiz. In addition, available for download at the website is a free white paper from InfoTrends entitled "Recession Realities: The Year for Digital Efficiency and Effectiveness"— which highlights the new technologies and strategies that businesses can consider in today's difficult economy.