Twitter Marketing

Introduction
Primary use of Twitter has evolved to include not only the life events of original users, but the advertising of companies and organizations. Co-founder of Twitter, Evan Williams believes many of the ideas driving the growth of the website come from unexpected uses invented by the users themselves.
Twitter can be used to promote individuals, organizations and companies. The message of a twitter marketer has to be conveyed precisely and clearly within the 140 character limit, which can then be sent to all followers. These followers can then choose to purvey the message to each of their followers; the reach of Twitter is all based on the fact the millions of people around the globe can be reached.
How Twitter Marketing Could Work
Twitter is a fast way to a the message out to millions of followers in a very short amount of time. This amount of knowledge sharing gives twitter an advantage for marketers. By searching for a particular current event, products, or discussion point Twitter can be used to stay on top of industry and market trends. This search can help to refine a brand by observing the “tweets” made about an industry or the general opinion of a certain market. Twitter has been recognized as a great networking tool by users and now companies who want to promote their products, services, and also the company brand. Customers can be engaged by interacting with human representative of the company who can respond to tweets. This makes a more human connection to the customer as opposed to the more mechanical system of spam emails and give and more empathic design to the marketing of a company. There are currently over 2000 programs based on the Twitter service, such as Twhirl, TweetScan, Digsby, Trillian, Snitter, and Spaz. All of these programs can help track comments, trends and posts. Currently Twitter is the quickest way to spread information virally to a large scope of people connected in a lot of random ways.
Twitter has become a significant business tool with single users to large companies such as Zappos and CNN using the service for promotion. An Abrams Research survey found over 200 social media leaders indicate Twitter as the best social media tool for businesses. While a free service, 39.6% of social media experts would recommend a company to pay for the service.
Many celebrities are also using Twitter to engage with their fans. Some, including Ashton Kutcher and Shaq, manage their own Twitter feed and post their own tweets. Some, however, may use ghost writers to manage their posts. The latter approach could be risky as the Twitter community may see it as disingenuous. Ashton Kutcher was the first Twitter user to attract one millions followers. He was in a close race with CNN. The race attracted a great deal of media attention and resulted in Mr. Kutcher appearing on Oprah and a number of other TV shows. Kutcher recognized the marketing potential of the situation and used it to drive awareness and funding to support a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing malaria.
What Markets Can it Access?
The most recent estimate of monthly traffic on Twitter topped 15 million people for March 2009, figured quoted for United States traffic only. Of these visitors there is a close split between male and female users with males at 48% and females at 52% of users, with students making up a great percentage of users. The majority of users falls between the ages of 18-35 and are overwhelmingly Caucasian, 82%. The most even numbers are seen when users are categorized by income with a very nearly even split four ways between those who earn $0-30,000, $30,000-$60,000, $60,000-$100,000 and $100,000 or more.
Common Pitfalls
Large numbers of organizations are starting to use Twitter to market. Unfortunately, many of them are suffering from Vasa Syndrome, a pitfall created by pushing an idea, product, or strategy forward with little or incorrect information.
Overuse
Unlike spam email, Twitter is an opt-in service. Receive a Twitter message can only happen if you decide to follow a certain Twitter feed. There is always the option to no longer follow a feed. The user is in control of what they see. This is both to the advantage and disadvantage of the Twitter Marketer, who must consider etiquette so as not to spam followers.
Marketers are treating twitter like most other forms of marketing - trying to attract people with floods of follow requests from fake accounts. This may be marginally effective, but it can annoy potential customers and create a negative attitude toward the company.

In an attempt to increase sales twitter marketers have made the mistake of posting sales, deals, and new products with every single tweet they post. This common marketing technique is called broadcasting and can be seen in T.V., online, and paper advertisements. Using this technique on twitter can annoy potential customers and eventually cause them to stop following. Marketers are realizing now that in order to gain large numbers of followers they must keep their audience engaged and entertained.

Abuse
Before using Twitter to promote yourself or a company make sure there are very clear guidelines on how to use it and what information is ok to post. Also be careful of those that wish to slander you on Twitter, they can have a continueing negitive impact on the way people view your product if it is allowed to continue.
Twitter users must be careful not to release sensitive information about their company. Republican Pete Hoekstra made this mistake about a confidential trip and is now the subject of scrutiny. This can also happen in private industries where confidential information is leaked to the rest of the company or other comeditiors.
Companies are being slandered on Twitter by upset customers who register under the company’s name and post offensive or untrue material. It only takes one annoyed customer to create an account and slander your company. To avoid this it has been suggested that every company registertheir twitter account online. Companies are being slandered on Twitter by upset customers who register under the company’s name and post offensive or untrue material. To avoid this pitfall one writer suggests every company registering their twitter online.
Examples of Good Twitter Marketing
As with all Brand strategy, it is recommended that one creates a purpose and image that they want to maintain on Twitter. Your profile picture and background design should represent this brand well. This is also the nature that your Tweets should follow. The following is example of company that has had success doing so:
*[http://twitter.com/Starbucks @Starbucks] posts endearing Tweets that motivate followers to visit when they want to relax and get work done.
Building brand familiarity is also very important. The book Naked Coversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel advocates that blogging builds a relationship and humanizes companies so that customers can get an attachment to the brand - this translates to customer reliability and customer reccommendation- which translate to higher sales. Twitter is a form of Micro Blogging in that it allows for you to share information in smaller sizes than a typical blog post. CEO's and marketers can use this build that kind of relationship with customers
*[http://twitter.com/msgreen @msgreen] allows for followers to get to know the Green M&M (targeted towards M&M's female customers).
*[http://twitter.com/mmsracing @mmsracing] allows for followers to get to know the Red M&M through tweets about NASCAR (targeting M&M's male consumers).
*[http://twitter.com/ev @ev] (Evan Williams -CEO of twitter) keeps followers interested in Twitter by tweeting about his personal life as well as his plans to improve the twitter user experience.
Twitter has limitations in the amount of connection you can build with customers, due to the restriction on the amount of information you can provide. Tethering you Twitter profile with your company website/blog gives customers a place to reach you for more information. This can be done by posting your main URL under your name in your profile. Some marketers, like [http://twitter.com/joelcomm @joelcomm] and [http://twitter.com/waynesutton @waynesutton] have posted their multiple URLs in their profile pictures to allow for followers to know the multiple ways to reach them.
This method is popular, but since it is a picture and not text, it requires followers to type in your URL into their browser by hand. AN alternative, if you have multiple links you want to share, is to include a link to your different parts of your website (or your different websites) with relevant informative tweets. This allows for followers to immediately click and go to your website.
*[http://twitter.com/guykawasaki @GuyKawasaki]tweets about current events and then adds a link on his that refers to the topic he tweets about
Other Successful Marketing Pages
There are many strong examples of a company using Twitter well. These include Carnival, the New York Times, the Obama campaign, Woot, NASA and Turbotax.
*[http://twitter.com/nytimes @nytimes]:
NY Times uses twitter as a way to immediately update its followers when a new article is published. The major benefit here is that followers can be informed of breaking news without needing to check the website. However, the frequency of updates raises the possibility that people may not pay attention to every update.
In this case, NY Times is using twitter in a way very similar to a traditional [http://en. .org/wiki/RSS_(file_format) RSS feed].
*[http://twitter.com/woot @woot]:
This is another fairly simple application of Twitter, once again updating when the source website changes. However, this is much more useful as it is a single update on the special sale of the day. The infrequency of updates makes it much more feasible to utilize one of Twitter’s unique benefits: the ability to forward messages as text messages to a user’s cell phone.
*[http://twitter.com/BarackObama @barackobama]:
Here we begin to see humanization of the marketing campaigns. Although largely abandoned now, during Obama’s presidential campaign the twitter feed was consistently updated with short posts linking followers to videos of rallies, transcripts of events and message boards that were seeking user input.
This was used primarily as a way to focus those interested in Obama’s campaign on specific issues. It allows for quick communication to a very interested userbase. Obama essentially used his Twitter as a micro-blog
*[http://twitter.com/NASA @NASA]:
This is one of the most complete implementations of Twitter. NASA has a twitter page for many employees, projects, labs, and other locations.
The main NASA page serves as an RSS style news feed. However, not all posts are links. Occasionally they are short summaries of various NASA related incidents of the day.
The main thing that sets NASA apart from other RSS-style feeds is a willingness to answer direct questions. This direct interaction with the public begins to give NASA a more human touch, starting to create a connection to the department.
This humanizing connection is further encouraged by the other NASA related twitter pages. The mars science lab writes posts and responds to others in the first person. Many members of NASA post updates during their day, discussing things from practicing spacewalking to watching a PONY league baseball game. Further reinforcing the effect of talking to a real employee, they also respond to others. This humanization and willingness to respond starts to add human aspects to an otherwise faceless organization, increasing both organizational transparency as well as fostering the aforementioned human connection.
In addition to adding a human face to the company, the Twitter pages of NASA employees serve as a database of other skills or interests the employees have. This creates an organic organizational memory database, offering another venue for checking to see if any untapped skills exist within the company.
*[http://twitter.com/turbotax @turbotax]:
Turbotax functions as many things, including a newsfeed. It serves as a help-desk, directly answering questions from other users. It holds occasional contests, some as strange as giving away a copy of Turbotax to the 10th person to respond with a tax day related haiku. It also makes incredibly clear that although the account is a company account it is a person making all the posts.
When useful feedback is offered, the response is a statement that it will be forwarded to the programming team. This is a clear example of empathic design. The turbotax twitter page allows for these valuable user suggestions to reach the programming team.
The human representative style of this page offers many benefits. It allows for greater interaction with the userbase, both gathering information and helping to humanize the company. It creates reasons to follow the page beyond the simple micro-blog updates on new product features; it offers help to those with questions and fun contests for everyone to see. The time limited aspect of the contests is especially interesting, rewarding frequent checking of the Turbotax page.
*[http://twitter.com/CarnivalCruise @CarnivalCruise]:
This page takes Twitter in an interesting direction: its purpose is more a general discussion of Carnival with only the occasional sales related link. This page is much more interested in responding to other Twitter users and talking about how wonderful their Carnival trip was. It also serves as a help desk, willing to answer user questions about sales, ships, locations and the like.
This style of advertising focuses on what are essentially organic testimonials: other users find the carnival page and discuss how great their trip was. Carnival seemingly recognizes the importance of positive consumer opinions, frequently retweeting those who interact with it seeking to continue the conversation. Such discussion could be called knowledge sharing between consumers while they discuss the many opportunities that await in a Carnival cruise.
See Also
*Twitter
*Viral Marketing

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