About a year ago I wrote a story here and here about the future of Twitter as a large corporation method of communicating with customers and prospects. Today by email I received an invitation from American Express to join Open Forum Pulse. AMEX describes Open Forum Pulse as follows:
"Every day, more and more business owners are sharing their insights on Twitter. To help them find each other—and potential customers—we're introducing OPEN Forum PulseSM, a unique online experience that brings together the Twitter feeds of some of the most-followed business owners and industry leaders. We understand that connections can drive growth, even in this economy, so we've created Pulse as an innovative way to help you make those connections."
Basically AMEX is organizing tweets from small business owners into a branded forum. If you are interested in small business owner views on business and life, you no longer have to create a search on Seesmic or a group on TweetDeck to aggregate tweets. Just visit the link for Open Forum Pulse.
Not a bad implementation of social media by AMEX and it expands the reach of AMEX's Open Forum website. I wish they had created an RSS feed for Pulse because going to a website to get constantly updated information is a bit clunky in this day and age. (Email invitations are also kind of clunky.) I am sure they will change that when they read this post, which will be in a tweet about one minute after I post it.
Now if AMEX had just hired me a year ago as their social media advisor, they could have saved a year in implementing Twitter. I expect their call right after Microsoft and Google call for help with their strategies.
As an aside, I think there is a business opportunity to establish companies that provide "social media relations". Basically this would be a PR type firm that specializes in developing the daily social media content for larger corporations. I have yet to meet a PR firm that really understands social media or is set up to provide daily content on Twitter, FB, blogs, etc. There is a secret to how to make this business successful, but I am keeping that to myself. Client inquiries are welcome.
Miami, FL
