In the past five years, give or take, product placement has gone from carbonation to technology. We’ve had the Apple logo shoved down our throats so much so that every time I eat a granny smith, I think about how much I spent on my iMac – no regrets of course,  just high tech advertising at its best.

Before digital media, the sponsorship heavy hitters included Coca Cola, Budweiser and car dealerships. When Brad Pitt drinks it, we drink it. Now that search engines, subscription and social networking sites have become “products” in themselves, we are seeing more and more of their presence in commercials, feature films and on our favorite TV shows.  So, just how far away are we from hearing the words, “this broadcast is brought to you by Twitter?”

Living rooms across the country were astonished by this year’s Google ad during the Superbowl. Does Google.com really need a commercial to grow its profit margin? “How much did that air time cost?” an eager Saints fan asked me. I have a good guess, but I bet Ancestry.com could tell you, considering they’re running Sunday ads on NBC during “Who Do You Think You Are.”

And let’s take the recent blockbuster graphic novel turned movie, Kick Ass. If any film could’ve snuck in a subliminal Pepsi can, Doritos or pizza, targeted at teenagers, it was this one. On the contrary – in this day in age, it was comic books, iPhones and MySpace.com. MySpace you ask? Yes – that blast from the past networking site is the communication device used to call the title character into fighting crime. Okay, a little behind the times in my opinion but perfect if they are trying to drive traffic back to  their site, right?

Is this an example of product placement? Absolutely. Free advertising? That still remains a mystery. Corporate sponsorship deals are very hush, hush – especially in the film industry. So, whether consumers will be rushing to their computers to join MySpace.com (again) or buy a set of nun chucks after seeing Kick Ass – that remains to be seen.

Move aside Pepsi and Starbucks – I’ll be drinking the iPhone and Facebook from now on!

First, a quick introduction. Guy is a notable blogger, serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist as well as a recent author.

The title of the presentation was Using Twitter as a Marketing Weapon, a bullet list of his points is available. He covered eight major things about using Twitter for marketing, and used plenty of examples. Here we go.

Monitor – Guy gave a few examples of using Twitter search to keep up with conversations that are happening around companies, industries, product lines, and even all conversation through a specific account. Nothing fancy here, just recapping the possibilities. The main point here is that Twitter search provides powerful means to keep up with conversations about you, your competition, or anyone else.

Engage – Your company should have an account on Twitter. He didn’t spend much time here, so I won’t either.

Sell – Its possible to use Twitter directly to increase revenue. I’ve covered this before. Guy gave a couple of examples that are noteworthy. Dell Outlet has generated millions by announcing specials online. At this point Guy gave a shout out to Dell for their creativity here, and asked if anyone in the audience works for them. When someone stuck their hand up Guy jokingly asked if he gets a computer for plugging them, and the Dell person said, “First you have to learn to pronounce ‘Inspiron’ properly.” Ouch! Snarky! Guy didn’t skip a beat; he went right in to his next example. Kogi BBQ is a single truck that sells Korean Mexican tacos throughout Los Angeles. They use Twitter to announce where they’re headed a few hours before they move, and they’ve managed to build their Twitter following up to 60,000 people. They said when they pull up to a new spot there are usually about 50 people waiting for fresh tacos when they arrive. THAT’s pretty awesome.

Support – He talked about two companies that are using Twitter to provide support, Virgin America and Comcast. Apparently a passenger on a Virgin flight once tweeted that the flight attendant forgot to serve his meal. Someone at that account got in touch with the pilots, who then relayed the message back to the attendant and the man received his food after all. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but if it is its a pretty powerful example of the use of Twitter.

Prospecting – This is the point at which Guy’s message started to capture my attention. He presented some pretty creative methods of finding potential clients through Twitter advanced search and Google’s search operators. Did you know that Twitter allows you to do localized searches, such as pizza in Austin? Suppose you want to sell equipment to wedding photographers, you can use Google to search through Twitter names (note that this will search through both user names and real names). Would you rather search through Twitter bios to find the person you’re after? That’s no problem! I have to say, I’ve known about each of these features of Twitter & Google, but had never put this together. Brilliant!

Get More Followers: Focus on Content – Here Guy stresses the importance of saying something that’s worth being heard. We’ve all seen tweets that aren’t worth reading, most of us have probably even posted a few. Guy provides a few sources for quality content, Alltop (of course) is an aggregator of news from across the web, StumbleUpon is content that people have voted up, and SmartBrief categorizes news into industry specific feeds. He attributes his success on Twitter (more than 200k followers) to regularly providing links to interesting/useful/insightful stories. His content is re-tweeted hundreds of times each day, which confirms his hunch.

Get More Followers: Tweet! – Once you’re on top of great content, take advantage of some tools that help you manage the flow of tweets through your account. Guy spent quite a bit of time talking about Objective Marketer, which is a service that allows you to automatically resend tweets throughout the day. Get 90 days free with the promo code “wiseguy”! Guy does send each tweet more than once; he said that over time he’s seen that when he sends a tweet a 2nd, 3rd & 4th time, the number of clicks on his links go up accordingly. So sending a tweet out for times in one day generates approximately four times the number of clicks. Once again, brilliant. He also introduced TwitterFeed & TwitHawk. TwitterFeed is a service that automatically tweets the contents of an RSS feed such as your blog. TwitHawk continually searches for a specific set of criteria and then will allow you to either automate a reply, or you can manually reply.

Tools – He spoke briefly about Twitter clients, you’ll definitely want one. Guy uses TweetDeck, I’ve tried several and it’s my favorite also.

On the drive back to the office, Nikki & I agreed that this was one of the best marketing seminars that we’ve attended. All of the info that Guy gave was relevant and helpful. I’m encouraged to renew my commitment to social marketing. And if I ever had any doubt, I’m now even more convinced that Twitter is greater than Facebook. Its openness and flexibility, when combined with the right tools, make it a pretty valuable weapon to have in your marketing arsenal. In case you haven’t done it yet, go follow Guy Kawasaki and RMM Online. As a bonus, if you want to get links to his talking points, you can text “alltop” to 44133.