I’m looking at how a few museums and art collectives use twitter to spread awareness about their activities, upcoming shows, etc.  I’ve said before that twitter is a great resource for groups like local theatres — with a few easy offers over twitter your foot traffic could increase.

@bklynartprjct is a Brooklyn-based art collective using twitter very well — posting links like crazy: newspaper articles about the group, slideshows of work, blog posts, emerging artists, et al.  Even if only one out of ten links are clicked through, art links can go viral fast.

@brooklynmuseum uses the same successful strategies.  Tweeting about the museum’s weekend schedule, links to the museum’s facebook, and my favorite – posting that they are open despite the museum web site being down. 

Companies hopping on twitter could use twitter the same way: I would like to see a company posting about its unique employees, its human capital and knowledge base.  Pictures from within the building, funky things.  Show the CEO’s record collection. 

Also, @ZekesGallery.  I’m sure Zeke is a great guy and the gallery is top notch.  But if you compare his tweets with the Brooklyn tweeters above, you’ll see the NY folk are using twitter more effectively in terms of awareness and attempts to drive traffic.  (Alas, @ManitobaMuseum seems to have abandoned ship.  We hardly knew ye, Manitoba…)

Mars is getting in on the twitter action, giving the marketing potential a go with its character @mrsgreen.  The old saw went the green ones make you horny, right?  Well to Mars’ credit, it is selling exclusively green packs of M&Ms for the upcoming Valentine’s Day holiday.

I noticed @mrsgreen about three days ago (she’s front and center on the twitter ‘featured’ window on public timeline)  and to date she has 110 followers.  I like @mrsgreen; there’s nothing deceptive or black hatty about her presence on twitter.  Good clean fun.  She won’t be the last anthropomorphic foodstuff we see on twitter this year, betcha.   

Boobik? is an adult microblogging site where you can ‘meet people the sexy way’, according to its copy. Mobuzz.tv gives it some love, and I’ve been reading a good chunk of speculation here and there about it today. Apparently Boobik? supports video embedding, and certainly photos aplenty. It is mucho NSFW. Boobik?s terms of service appear braced for the wide array of material the site will no doubt generate. Twitter’s users number at ~1M, right? It’ll be interesting to see how rapidly Boobik? grows.

Microjournalism, as it is called in today’s New York Times, is the latest trend in twitter usage and is now gaining speed as the campaign trail does the same.  I follow @anamariecox and @newmediajim, two ‘microjournalists’ (somehow this microjournalism tag smacks of music critics coming up with the latest hyphenate a la ‘emo-glitch-laptop-mom-core’…)

From article:

When I read Ms. Cox’s concise reportage — “McCain: ‘Willford Brimmley is our response to Chuck Norris.’ ” — the potential for parody was high enough, and Ms. Cox engages in sufficient parody that I had to double-check with newspaper accounts to find corroborating photographs of Mr. Brimley and Mr. McCain sharing a microphone.

Searching Flickr on a whim to see what ‘twitter’ search yields:

A Twitter Tree by pandemia

William Couch’s 2007 twitter statistics

iJustine hearts twitter more than Scoble

geirarne’s X Y axis for keeping in touch with his friends

The Ninja Bunny comic strip

Daneel Ariantho’s Ecosystem

faster panda kill kill says die twitter die

and hundreds of pictures of this great twitter shirt!  Where can I get one?

A Christmas-time trivia contest  from mimoco, which makes badass robot usb flash drives.  Participants could follow @mimobot and respond to a daily trivia question in hopes of winning some robot loot.  (I want the Boba Fett.) 

This form of attracting followers is seeming well-documented now.  Seems to work quite well too.

An older post from corporatewebsite.com, making a business case for enterprise usage of twitter, by Derek Abdinor.

From post:

The relation of a microblog to a blog post is often compared to the snippets of news on the ticker below the main news story on CNN or Sky TV News. Often a few pithy words is all the information you need to convey, and it does not detract from the main stories which are actually a different media.

I’m seeing this analogy more and more, and I have to say I like it.  Friday food for thought…

Marketing Pilgrim has posted a wildly generous resource, listing 75+ social media experts, SEO champs, search marketing experts, et al. 

From Marketing Pilgrim’s post:

Many underground conversations go on within Twitter that never make it to the blogosphere or news sites. It can be a dynamite location for link bait ideas, breaking stories, and general topics you might not think about on a daily basis. You might even find yourself obtaining clientèle through it.

Some of the talent listed include @NewspaperGrl, @chiropractic, @JasonCalacanis, @EricFriedman, @johnandrews, y mucho mas.

I should note this list is dynamic, as Marketing Pilgrim is encouraging self-listing via its comments.  75+ is fast becoming 175+.  Expect to see some massive followers/following increases among this set, especially as this post comtinues to be dugg.  This is a great idea!

Brian Brady from WorldWideWeathPlanners.com is using twitter to share his take on mortgage rate activity and market information.  Find him at @mortgagereport.

He tweets once or twice a week.  (I follow him, despite knowing next to nothing about mortgages — other than that I’m thankful I’m not trying to sell my home right now.)  Brady’s model is one that would be excellent for local businesses to use to drum up weekend foot traffic, for instance.  The Alamo Drafthouse could post its midnight movies.  Hyde Park Theatre could post new show times and link to positive reviews.  Restaurants, their specials, fish in season, drinks, so on. 

I found Brady’s mortgage report and @AndyBeal’s follow-me-and-win contest (he’s up to 643 now, by the way — his contest is kicking ass) from their blogs.  So in both cases they are solving the ‘finding followers’ challenge by posting elsewhere and directing traffic to twitter. 

Also in both instances, the new follower has a clear incentive for following.  It’s not enough to say: follow me on twitter.  Instead: here’s why you should follow me on twitter. 

Businesses should also consider including instructions for joining twitter in their promotions.  Build that in, and show just how easy it is to adopt twitter use.  Accept the responsibility for promoting the twitter brand along with promoting your own deal.      

@AndyBeal up to 583.