Now if you ask me, criminals sometimes come up with the most creative uses for services. A man in Monroe Washington used Craigslist to create decoys in a ploy to rob a Bank of America branch office for a bag of money. “In a move that could be right out of a Hollywood movie, a brazen crook apparently used a Craigslist ad to hire a dozen unsuspecting decoys to help him make his getaway following a robbery outside a bank on Tuesday. He then made his escape in an inner tube on the Skykomish River.”

The man (who has not been caught) recruited people on Craigslist for a $28.50/hr road work job. He had them dress the part, and he showed up at the bank in matching attire. After pepper spraying the armed guard holding the money he bolted out the door, ran to the nearby river, and made his getaway in an inner tube. No one could tell the difference between the robber, and the crowd of road workers he hired that all looked the same.

Say what you want but that’s some creative shit. Goes to show that you can also make money with social media outside of the internet. My favorite part has to be how he escaped by floating down a river lol, the FBI says the only evidence they have so far is the inner tube. “The robber sprayed the guard with pepper spray, grabbed a bag of money the guard was carrying and ran about 100 yards to the creek that runs into the Skykomish River, shedding clothes as he ran.”

Check out the local news article here.

As we know, Twitter can be used to brand yourself or your company with some great success. The key however is to make sure you are prominent in your target audience. Obviously you can spread as wide across the network as you want but make sure to hit your target audience hard.

This is actually quite easy, possibly easier than you thought if you didn’t know about their advanced search engine: http://search.twitter.com/advanced. Using this tool alone you can easily plant a seed in your target audience. Let’s say you are a shoe store working your way into social media. This search could help you find people interested in shoes who also blog, comment, share content, etc. What that means, is that possible customer then has the tendency to spread the word and really do your marketing for you. Or you could go even deeper and do a search for local users. Real Estate anyone? Why not use Twitter’s search to help you draw from people in your area looking for what you provide?

Simple, quick, to the point… you can see there are some dam useful features on Twitter when it comes to branding. The ability to go local is huge and can help you dominate in your niche. Establishing a strong social media presence can increase your business in many ways.