A Guide to Online Marketing by Kareem Ahmed

More info @ http://www.shewearsyourtee.com

I randomly saw this tweet and realized how little the ordinary person knows about marketing. We live in a different world where nothing is coincidental. This is just called targeting.

With 2010 arriving at nightfall, I woke up feeling excited.

I am a fan of the “new year” mentality. It forces change even amongst those who are most resistant to it. I’ve got a lot of friends who WANT to do things and never get around to it or keep making excuses so I thought I’d share my thought process on reaching goals.

1. Identify Some Goals: Usually this requires some sort of alone time. Maybe a day on the ski hill..maybe a short (or long) vacation. Clear thinking allows you to identify what you really want.

2. Develop Steps to Take To Reach Goals: Figure out the steps you need to take in order to get to your goals. It isn’t hard. Think to yourself, how do I get from point A to point B? A good example for me was grad school. I wanted to go because I thought it’d be the cure to my boredom (it wasn’t) in order to get in, I figured out the necessary steps to take and went from initial thought phase to acceptance in under a month. This is also a good example of how to identify incorrect goals, since grad school is not a cure to boredom, new goals are a cure to boredom

3. Don’t Give Up: Are your dreams sneaky little devils? Keep chasing them and I seriously promise you that you will catch them.

Thank you all for supporting me during the past year. I look forward to meeting many new, amazing people and experiencing more life in 2010!

2009, it has been a pleasure knowing you.

Today I was once again amazed at how powerful a great and eccentric Twitter network can be.

We spend our days shooting the shit and having great conversations, but I was surprised when I asked a pretty personal/in-depth question that took more effort than just formulating a 140 character opinion:

Now, how many responses do you think I got? 3? 5? 7? Nope.

I got over 10 responses. I am not even talking about “I use X Brand, they are great.” type of responses (although a few people did say that and I do truly appreciate it, that is the kind of response that I would have given.)

What really blew my socks of was that people actually went out of their way to give me names of their personal agents as well as their phone numbers, email addresses, and personal web sites. So thank you all for making my search so much easier.

I didn’t even have to Google anything, which leads to to the question…will the future of online search be completely network based?

Something else that I noticed was that no insurance agents or insurance companies attempted to get ahold of me, so go pitch them.

I keep seeing this Twitter tactic over and over again. (I even participate and that is the reason I am writing this post.)

“Follow @kareemy and RT for a chance to win ____x______”

It’s kind of like forcing something to become viral. It really pushes people to take action and they do it.

Usually people do follow and they do RT the message but they don’t do it because they like the product or brand…they do it because they want to win.

Isn’t brand building a way to gain more awareness amongst a target audience? Isn’t the goal of marketing dollars to actually make an impact on your consumer’s behavior? I don’t think that this does either.

Don’t get me wrong. It works for gaining followers if that’s what your goal is. It also works for increasing brand mentions if that’s what your goal is.

But if the goal doesn’t involve Twitter, I don’t think it’s a very effective way of promoting a product.

What do you think?

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I do think that this tactic works if you are planning on giving away something like snowboard bindings. The only people that will follow and retweet are snowboarders, therefore you are reaching your target audience.