I’m going to hold my hands up…I’m not an early adopter. I’m happy for others to buy the first version of a new gadget or sign up to the next big thing online. That way, they get all of the bugs out of the way before I take the plunge.
So you won’t be surprised to hear that I wasn’t exactly convinced by Twitter when I first heard about yet. After all, blogging like this still amuses me – who really cares what I have to say? But microblogging, well that’s another level! I couldn’t imagine conveying anything meaningful in the 140 characters Twitter allows (you get 160 characters for a text message)
But this is 2009. Grammar is losing all relevance and copy writing in a traditional sense is a dying art. But at the same time it is a new challenge and one that requires a lot of skill. We all know that if someone asks you to explain who you are in 10 words, that is a far harder than rambling on for 100 or 1000words. And so it is with Twitter. You have to be concise – get straight to the point and forget the formalities.
But I do wonder who really needs to know that I’ve just come back from a meeting and am now preparing for a conference call. Probably no one, but with data protection issues and privacy laws at the forefront of many marketer’s minds, Twitter is like gold dust. Why? Because Twitter is the ultimate opt-in marketing mechanism.
You see, people sign up to follow your Twitter stream (or “tweets” as individual posts are known). So if you want to tell interested parties that a new product is available, you post it on Twitter. You have a service problem, post it on Twitter. You are running a special promotion, just tweet.
Sounds simple, but be aware – nobody wants to have sales messages shoved down their throats, so use Twitter effectively to give people useful information as well as marketing information. They’ll soon stop following you if you don’t and your tweets will eventually go unread.
But if there is any doubt about the current power of Twitter, think back to the airliner which recently crash landed in New York’s Hudson River. An eyewitness snapped some photos on his mobile, and uploaded them to Twitter. Within moments the photo had gone global, whilst all of the major news networks were still desperately trying to get camera crews to the scene.
Is Twitter a fad? I’m still not sure, but a lot of people are squawking about it at the moment…
@eclipseinternet
Eclipse Internet
I have to admit that I really like Twitter, I think it has so much to offer. One of its selling points to me is that instant messaging facility. At first you wonder why you do not get many DM or @ replies, but then it is more about sharing with others your findings or journey through each day. Once you get to know Twitter you start to unfold all the benefits to it – Tweetdeck to help manage your account, Firefox add ons to move easily between accounts, and then as Richard said there are all the selling and marketing possibilities – new products, events, quick messages the list really is endless. It could be used for Customer Services, Sales, Marketing any internal team really. The are things to be wary of though – your profile, the balance of DM and @ replies, the balance of followers vs. following. As with anything it has to be carefully considered, planned and utilised for a business. I certainly do not think it is a fad, I just think Twitter will bceome bigger, better, more diverse and maybe expensive for brands.
I agree with Katie, I don’t think it’s a fad, I believe there will always be a place for microblogging in this day and age. Most of us are pretty busy and 140 characters summarises information, is scannable and works great, thanks to shortened URLs which enable you to click for more info, gaining the ‘detail’ from maybe a blog or a news site around the subject you’re interested in.
There are so many new social media tools available, (StumbleUpon, Delicious, Flickr, Blogs, RSS feeds, Last.fm etc) in development or being launched, that aggregators of this summarised content such as FriendFeed may become more useful. These aggregators could become your first port of call for gathering useful info than twitter itself as they include so many streams of information. However, so far in my opinion they aren’t designed that well and require a bit of a rethink until they are adopted by the less tech savvie (after all twitters early adopters were mainly techies – and that’s a simple easy to use sytem – Friendfeed is quite noisy!).
As for twitter from a business perspective or for improving knowledge in your chosen field, twitter takes patience. You need to find the right people to follow, those who provide info that is useful to you and you need to remember it’s not a one way street. There are many tools available to find people to follow who suit your quest for up to the minute info, which are great and really do add value to the service.
Also, as Katie has mentioned applications like Tweetdeck really open up twitter way beyond the basic ‘web version’, allowing you to quickly see trends, search for tweets on keywords of your choice and store these as conitinuous information feeds. I personally use it to observe real peoples thoughts on products I am interested in buying/evaluating or using or sometimes to see what people are tweeting about something I am watching on TV, or even reading. You can also use this to monitor how people feel about your own business, get feedback, get involved, creat a dialogue and maybe even retain or win a customer.
You basically get the best from twitter when you participate and give back. At the end of the day it’s fun. Social media isn’t just a one way street and the more you get involved the more you’ll get back. It’s also not just a consumer tool as some people seem to think. Your business customers maybe using twitter personally. These could be key decision makers within an organisation and a positive experience of your brand and the way you treat your customers can only be a good thing for your business.
There will be no doubt (as there currently are) copycat systems that emulate twitter, however particularly in the UK twitters promotion via the likes of @stephenfry, @wossy and countless other celebs put it well and truely in the driving seat for market share of microblogging. I don’t doubt there is a place for other services for niche markets but I can imagine these may only scratch the surface and that the best place to be for maximum exposure is on twitter.
We’ll have to wait and see what happens as twitter works towards monetising itself. It’s currently a free and non profit making service (although it has some heavyweight sponsors and recently turned down a multi-million $ deal from Facebook). I just hope whatever happens it doesn’t reduce the usefulness and openness of this wonderful service!
[...] more interesting thoughts on Twitter can be found on Stuarts blog