A February 7th article by Todd Wasserman in Brandweek with the headline “Is Twitter the Next Second Life” quotes statistics and advertising executives making the case that Twitter is not that useful to brand marketing and may lose popularity as has Second Life. I take the view that the people quoted in the article are not the people who clearly understand the power of Twitter.
The power of Twitter is not exclusive to celebrity people promoting themselves or brands. The power of Twitter is for people/brands that effectively use Twitter to easily, consistently and constantly have two-way conversations with their target markets.
(Note those words consistently and constantly as well as two-way conversations – these are very important for an effective Twitter strategy.)
Big brands that do not understand the power of Twitter conversations but continue to use Twitter as they use television and magazine advertising to push out their one-sided messages are missing the boat.
Twitter interaction is not about pushing out a brand’s message. Twitter is about sharing a brand’s message with interested followers who want to interact with the worthwhile information that the brand shares in relation to its offerings.
Here’s an imaginary example: We’ll assume a huge national snack category of gluten-free products. We’ll call this company Good for You with the Twitter username @GoodforYou (at this writing there is no such Twitter username).
Now here are two different Twitter scenarios for this company:
In scenario one the company only tweets about its products – the tweets are a constant stream of pushing messages about how good such-and-such specific product is for you.
In scenario two the company tweets information from a company blog and from other health blogs (unrelated to the company) about gluten-free diets, exercise, avoiding sleep deprivation, etc. The tweets also answer questions that people have asked on Twitter about gluten-free diets. (These questions can be found by using one of the Twitter search functions.)
Then every so often in a tweet the company mentions a product or a special offer or a link to a recipe using the ingredients the company manufactures.
Using Twitter effectively for brand/company marketing is not about quantity of followers. It’s about quality of followers who really care about what you offer on and off Twitter.
Instead of worrying about how many followers you can amass in how short an amount of time, concentrate on devoting your efforts to truly engage on Twitter by sharing worthwhile information.
When I check out the Twitter profile of someone who has just followed me in order to decide whether to follow that person or brand, I can tell whether that person/brand is really engaging on Twitter or is only pushing a message.
This is obvious both from the specific tweets as well as from where the tweets come from. When the tweets only come from automatic feeds and there are no replies to other people’s tweets, I know this is someone who is only pushing a message and not someone I want to follow.
I choose to follow people who share worthwhile information on Twitter by actually participating in the Twitter community. And does this mean I spend hours a day on Twitter? Actually, I probably spend less than 30 minutes total a day spread out over 16 hours (8 a.m. to midnight my time). Yet I spend those minutes actively engaging and sharing with the Twitter community.
And from where I sit, Twitter is extremely powerful if used effectively – and will be around for a very long time for the people who understand this.
Written by Phyllis Zimbler Miller
Los Angeles, CA
Twitter Marketing Expert on Site-Booster.com
Exclusive to HULIQ
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