Twitter, what is it good for? We all know about the voyeuristic aspects of learning that Stephen Fry was stuck in a London lift or seeing Ashton Kutcher’s photos of Demi Moore’s knickered bum, as featured in an article in London’s Sunday Times Magazine (the article isn’t online, but the twitter feeds are out there…of course).
More interesting, an article in the Times on Monday about how travel companies are using Twitter. Most use it as a channel for answering customer queries, posting marketing messages and offering travel ideas and inspiration. Some efforts were noted as less successful for not having a clear focus or continuity.
It’s tricky for companies. Twitter is a new channel and one that requires continual monitoring and commitment. Automation tools are available - Amazon uses Twitter bots to pull content from its blog - however, the dynamic and interactive nature of Twitter requires more involvement and strategy. Like mobile marketing before it, it must make sense and be relevant to audiences and the brand. Revolution Magazine points out shortcomings in its feature on Twitter failures by major brands.
A recent Businessweek article titled, ‘When Skittles Met Twitter,’ recalls a social media experiment where Skittles turned its home page over to live Twitter feeds, along with Facebook, Flickr and YouTube content. A few days later, there was a rethink after the users ’deluged the site with inane and often profane “tweets’…Nonetheless, it crashed Twitter and generated broad coverage, so perhaps it was considered successful? It is a time of trial and error - no one knows what will fly.
So, where does that leave companies and brands? Clearly, there are benefits of using the channel for customer service, announcing special deals and ideas interested followers can use. Twitter also offers:
- Buzz Monitoring: what are the hot topics? What are people saying about a brand and its core values and issues? There are numerous tools to track it all. Tweetdeck offers views for free or there are paid tools such as Trackur. For trends, check out Twist, which shows aggregated data of what people are saying on Twitter.
- Crowdsourcing: looking to get information, ideas or thoughts on a topic? Or to mobilize people for an event? Ask the Twitter universe and get immediate response. Certainly not a replacement for traditional research or other outreach tactics, however, in the right situation, it’s useful.
- Demographic targeting: Twitter communities are alive and kicking. Check out TwitterMoms, the ‘influential moms network,’ a proper social community complete with groups, forums, blogs, videos and events; and a prompt to download the TwitterMom free toolbar. It’s slick, it’s focused, it’s a marketing opportunity.
Or is it all a passing fad? US Research Group Neilson recently reported that ‘more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent. For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention.’
Regardless of the longevity of Twitter or its ultimate evolution, it’s a clear example of the quickly changing digital landscape. According to Forrester Research, interactive marketing is set to be a $55 billion business by 2014. Looks like it’s here to stay.
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