When business people find out that I’m in the social media field, one of the first questions they typically ask me is, “How can I use Twitter to market my product?”  Twitter, like Facebook or YouTube, is one of those single-word catchphrases that are defining the social media wave; however, like Madonna, it isn’t for everyone and everything.  

Let’s start with what Twitter is, then get into what it isn’t. But first, a caveat: I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of Twitter as a place to focus all of your brand messaging or community building efforts. I believe Twitter offers some incredible value in terms of search, monitoring and even traffic driving. However, when brand marketers ask me what they should be doing about Twitter, I generally answer, "Listen for now, spend money later."  I stand by that recommendation for a number of reasons. So, after a nice cold glass of Twitter haterade, here’s why:

RSS model

Here’s the Wikipedia definition of Twitter:

"Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers."

Okay, so to break this down:

1.  People write really short messages to people who want to listen to really short messages
2.  People subscribe to receive these very short – often mundane – messages from people they like (or “follow”)

This is really no different than subscribing to a blog that you like (via RSS). The difference is in frequency and length of each communication, but, really, Twitter is nothing that we haven’t seen before. In fact, the idea is so simple to replicate that Facebook has essentially integrated the exact same platform through its feed system. Think about how Facebook generally works:

1. People write really short messages (status updates) that their friends – or people who want to listen – receive in their feeds (also generally mundane)
2. People follow: they add friends, receive really short messages and can respond/comment/like/etc.
 
There is essentially NO DIFFERENCE between the two, other than the TYPE of and AMOUNT of content that people post and the people we decide to follow (we only "friend" people and “fan” brands that we know in Facebook. In Twitter, people are generally more willing to follow a stranger).  In fact, I might be so bold to suggest that Twitter cheapens our communication and connections with people. If you are a brand, this could potentially cheapen your value in social media (yes, really) if you’re not careful about your approach.

Q: If you are genuinely trying to build a community for your brand, why not create a page in Facebook, with all of its fantastic interactive capabilities and ability to give it your brand identity?
A: Because in Twitter, you can generally spam more people, you can do it faster and you can deceptively market to people by pretending to be a human being behind the Twitter logo

This isn’t community building.

Who’s there?

Consider the fact that 10% of users account for 90% of overall tweets, it seems like Twitter is filled with a lot of inactive accounts, a few voyeurs and a ton of brands marketing to each other.  This isn’t entirely fair- there have been some pretty amazing stories that have broken and been spread in Twitter (just search #iranelection). But these moments are the exception, not the rule.

Okay, no more haterade. Now to get into some game-changing, incredible and undeniably amazing things about Twitter:

Real-time search, pass-along and brand monitoring

Now THIS is what I see is Twitter’s real value.  The ability to get a real-time snapshot of what a community thinks about or is discussing about a certain topic is owned by Twitter: hands down. The search functionality, blended with a number of monitoring tools, has given us greater insights than expensive and complicated social media monitoring tools.  If you want to see who’s saying what, where they’re saying it and who they’re saying it to, Twitter is king. A few applications that are very useful include Twitter Search,  TweetBeep and Twitalyzer.

With the advent of URL shorteners like Bit.ly, the ability for marketers to track the pass-along of links is incredibly useful. This functionality allows brands to track where their message is going on Twitter, how many people are clicking back to the destination site, who’s spreading the word, etc. I highly recommend everyone start using Bit.ly to send links; the insights are incredible.

Another useful way to leverage Twitter is to develop relationships with influencers in the space. At RL&A, we’ve spent a great amount of time and energy building relationships with the thought leaders in our brands’ categories. These authors and thought leaders are already on Twitter and have a community built around them. When possible, we try to give our influencers compelling reasons to tweet about our clients, building conversation and generating ROI for the client. We basically give respected messengers OUR messages to distribute!

In summary, Twitter has some great elements, but the hype machine is definitely turned up to 110% on this one. If you are a brand marketer looking for where to spend your marketing budget in social media, be careful about lending too much weight to building your community in Twitter. You will be better served listening, monitoring and tracking with Twitter, but building your community in Facebook or elsewhere.  We have implemented several Twitter strategies for brands, and they are returning great ROI because we didn’t spend too much on the quantity in the channel, but the quality.
Now try saying that in 140 characters or less…………