Chat To Text (C2T)

Chat To Text, (C2T) allows you to send and receive text messages from your friends on Facbook, Bebo, and MySpace. 

I was really skeptical at first. I googled the guys name who sent me the information about C2T only to find out that he was an entrepreneur. So I responded back with a barrage of questions. 

He replied the following day and has been very helpful since. By putting a little widget on your profile page of Facebook, Bebo, MySpace etc your friends can send you a text (from their computer) and you can reply from your cell phone. Its similar to instant messaging only its texting instead.

Anyway, check it out for yourself:

http://www.chattotext.com/amember/go.php?r=19163&i=l0

As you'll see in the video, the best part is that you have the potential to make some serious cash just by spreading the word.

Let me know what you think!

Two way communication

 Automation defeats the purpose of the online marketplace. It takes away the potential for dialogue between the producer and consumer. Automation goes against every aspect of establishing a customer base or building a relationship with your customers. To me it goes against any successful businesses model. Businesses have numerous social mediums at their fingertips that they can use to listen to and talk with their customers to find out what they want from them. If you find out that the majority of your customers are not satisfied with product or service X listen to why they don't like it and ask them what they would like you to do about it. Humans aren't mind readers, so listen and ask--communicate. The web provides us with the opportunity to communicate as if we were sitting next to each other so take advantage and start a conversation. 

Automation

I recently read a blog post by ISM Boston a travel & lifestyle marketing firm that brought up the topic of automation. Now, as Bob Minihan author of the blog said that consumers hate automation. This I believe for the majority of us can be agreed upon. What happens if automated posts do start appearing on Twitter? Given its 150 character limit it seems as if the platform was almost asking for it, but how will consumers, you and I respond? 

It is my belief that the majority of consumers will begin to phase Twitter out. Not all of Twitter, but at least the businesses who are only posting automated messages. If a businesses is not willing to listen to its consumers why should I listen to them? This fight can go on and on. 

As I said in my comment to Bob's post I understand that time is money and automated posting allows businesses to focus its efforts elsewhere maybe even on their customers, but then why bother using Twitter at all?? 

I love twitter I think it's a great medium to say a lot in only a few words. For example you can post a link to an article you found or blog post and people can find it you can make people aware without droning on as some tend to do in blogs including this one. 

There are so many people using these new social mediums today that businesses have to listen to us. An automated message is not listening. If you listen to your consumers and join them in conversation success will be much easier to attain, your consumers will provide you with the ideas and answers to your questions. Automated responses will be the end to businesses listening to consumers, once again they will be shrugging us off.