This is sort of a follow-up to yesterdays video, so if you haven’t seen the video about Selling your Tweets, check it out.
The discussion going on yesterdays comments got me thinking about Evangelist Marketing and how Twitter is a great platform for evangelist marketing, I regularly am promoting services, products or sites that I love — that I find valuable to my life and that I truly believe are SO GREAT that everyone should know about them. Selling your tweets to advertisers is essentially the opposite of that!
I’d like to ask all of you, what are YOU an Evangelist for? What product website or service do you love that you feel so strongly about that you want to talk about it and share it with others? Maybe something people don’t know about, something new or something small that deserves to be shared with online design community?
Click here to tell me what you’re an Evangelist for — I’m gonna put together a blog post to share the stuff everyone sends in. This isn’t just about sending me a link, I want to hear YOUR story, why it’s important to YOU, why do you think it’s so important to share it with the community?
Also, what are your thoughts on Evangelist marketing vs traditional advertising practices, leave a comment!
This could end up being a pretty long comment. I’ll try to be as brief as possible. Be forewarned. :)
I totally agree that Twitter is a prime playground for evangelist marketing (EM), which is, of course, why businesses like ad.ly are trying to capitalize on it. I also agree that their approach is the polar opposite of all that is good about EM. True EM is honest word-of-mouth, driven by the enthusiasm of the evangelist. Add compensation or any other distortion to the mix and I would consider it worthless.
I have a couple things I am an evangelist for on Twitter. First and foremost is myself – as a designer, a freelancer, a creative being, a blogger and a friend. I use Twitter to promote and share and interact with others about the work I do and the things I am interested in. I push my philosophies and belief system by offering assistance, encouragement and questioning the status quo. So Twitter provides a wonderful avenue for all of this.
Second, I am an evangelist on Twitter for community, and most specifically the design community. Before Twitter I really was disconnected from even the awareness of the existence of the design community. But now I am in awe of the amazing designers and incredible people that interact and contribute and share and inspire and challenge each other. So I do my part to perpetuate that spirit. I try to meet and introduce and promote lesser-known designers as well as interact with, learn from and share with some of my designer “idols”. This has become one of my main reasons for being on Twitter and I cannot share the experience enough, trying my best to evangelize others to join in and do the same.
There are probably more things that I get passionate about and become an evangelist for, but I’ll leave it at that for the sake of brevity.
Love your blog and looking forward to this post. I’m a subscriber! Keep up the great work! :)
All Great points, Brian!
I’m the same way about the design community online. I’m always telling young designers (and my designer friends who’ve been in the biz forever) It is so amazing the community of designers and freelancers online right now, everyone is so willing to share knowledge and be helpful to one another. It really is a pretty cool thing!
Thanks for commenting, great to hear from you!
I totally agree with Brian, for me Tweeter has been a mind opener to the different communities out there.
Actually, that’s how I found you Liz, and your awesome job, also Niki, Smashing Mag, Abduzeedo, Webdesigner Depot, etc… I could go on forever. It has added so much value to my work as a designer. And I’ve found a ton of tools, free resources, etc…
I wasn’t very active posting tweets at the beginning, was much more a simple happy follower, now I’m an evangelist of a lot of stuff daily! I’m simply amazed about all the cool stuff that internet has to offer. A lot of it is free actually. I guess EM is what drives me daily to Twitter, I do socialize a bit, but mostly I’m trying to get, share and post valuable stuff in there.
I also love the idea of affiliate marketing, when it’s truly sharing the good news on something you really know and value, that’s what I meant in my comment on the other post. In this way I promote some products as WordPress themes, internet marketing courses and services, and I feel comfortable with it, because I promote them not like a spam bot, but as a satisfied customer, between a lot of simple desinterested recommendations to all kinds of stuff that I find valuable.
I love Grooveshark of Aviary for instance, but that’s just the stuff that is on the top of my mind right now.
Maybe I’ll come back to your form to fill it with something else and write my story with that. But right now I only wanted to share my thoughts with you.
I really enjoy your blog… and your beautiful and cool also! ;)