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RSSThe hype about marketing on Twitter will sound as silly as buying islands in Second Life or crowing about your company's MySpace friends. Most of us will deny that we ever took it seriously. Twitter's main systemic problem can be summed up in this chart:
TWITTER'S HYPE EXCEEDS ITS GROWTH
The growth in Twitter's traffic and media coverage has been impressive. But how many Twitter users are really active? As an experiment, I looked up all the "Bill Smiths" on Twitter. On May 4th, I could find 133. Of those 133 users, only 13 had 10 or more followers, 10 or more tweets and were active in the last month. So by this measurement, only 10% of Twitter's Bill Smiths are actively using Twitter.
According to Quantcast, 72% of Twitter visitors stop by once and don't come back. Only 1% of the Twitter audience visits daily and this group of "addicts" accounts for 35% of all visits. These numbers compare unfavorably to other social networks.
Of those that sign up, the retention rate is very low. According to Nielsen , 60% fail to return for a second month. This number holds true, even accounting for the websites and applications that feed into the Twitter community.
TWITTER IS NOT PARTICULARLY YOUNG OR HIP
In the March 2009 Nielsen Netview, Twitter has an index of 40 against the demographic of kids 12-17, and below-average index against full-time students. The highest indexing demographic group on Twitter is Males 35-49 (167). I question the youthfulness and hipness of any media that Sarah Palin & Senator Claire McCaskill have embraced before our interns.
TWITTER IS AN ECHO CHAMBER FOR INTERNET AND MARKETING PROFESSIONALS
The demographic group where Twitter is most popular is among Internet and marketing professionals, and those who write about them.
In March, I followed each of Jennifer Van Grove's "40 Best Twitter Brands ", curious as to who these brands might be reaching out to. Surveying the first 20 followers of Rubbermaid 's tweets, I found 15 out of the first 20 followers had jobs and professions related to Internet marketing. I concluded that Twitter is an excellent way to reach people with an interest in twittering.
BUT WHAT ABOUT ZAPPOS?
There are some brands doing things on Twitter that have value. But how big can that universe of brands get? And are these brands effective now only because newness and novelty? There are tens of thousands of brands trying to get our attention on a daily basis. How many brands are you willing to follow on Twitter?
The joy of feedback from your customers is great when it comes a few tweets at a time. But this is not scalable for most large companies with sizeable customer bases. The busy CEO, swamped by too many tweets, hires a team to help with the hassle. The users lose that sense of personal contact and the novelty quickly dies. Twitter becomes another customer service center and the Tweeting job(s) are outsourced overseas.
PONZI SCHEME
One could argue that social networks operate like Ponzi schemes. They require rapid growth to maintain interest and draw more users. There is inevitably a point where growth is limited by the size of the potential audience and the appeal of the service. When growth slows and the shine of newness fades, the network begins to wither and die.
ONANISTIC MARKETING
For Internet and marketing professionals, and those that follow them, Twittering keeps one busy and provides some thrills. But on the whole, it's an exercise in self-love. I welcome those of you who disagree with me to reply to @willakerlof.
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http://www.rushmoredrive.com/Editorial/Twitter_A_Conversation.aspx?fid=266f81f8-2a91-4b72-bb43-3a1e40d91039
Twitter is simply a tool among many that is seeking to connect people - no more, no less. There are a number of systems of the same ilk and, quite frankly, over time we'll see if any have any redeeming social value. Let's not forget these tools are simply online versions of something we've done since the dawn of humankind - socializing. Just like in any social setting, there are people that love to share a lot of information about themselves no matter how trivial and no matter who wants to hear, and others that prefer discrete, selective conversations about some specific topic of interest. Likewise, in any group you often run into someone who is just trying to sell you something or has a personal agenda. You tend to avoid/ignore them and pay attention to those with whom you have a common interest. All Twitter or other social tools do is facilitate this online.
Because we as Marketers are unable to exploit it to sell more does not diminish its value. It simply may not be a good Marketing vehicle in the traditional sense. I do think it (or any other similar tool) might be a good communication vehicle if one is looking at ways to establish communication with those who share a common interest in something. But we'll see - nobody knows if this will be a valuable business tool or not.
Use Twitter Search http://search.twitter.com to find topics and people of interest. Use location search "near:Sydney" to filter down to nearby conversations.
For me, it's a learning tool, collaboration tool, access to experts and advice, and a creator of community and serendipitous moments. Thrilling yes - but also should be taken seriously - a force for good. Forget the spammers and the aggressive marketers - you choose who to follow. I briefly touch on these points in my blog post http://tonyhollingsworth.blogspot.com/2008/11/you-should-be-on-twitter-creating.html
The comments to your post have also made good points - is there a way of subscribing to updates to the comments the way other sites allow? I'd like to keep in touch with this thread.
Cheers Tony Hollingsworth http://twitter.com/hollingsworth
Now, blogging and this whole internet thing in general, that probably won't catch on, so I will put the rest of my response on http://littlewinery.blogspot.com to not drown out the echos.
Oh, and although I will deny it in the future, I can be followed at @tbeauchamp if you are not in the enlightened 72% that see twitter for what it really is.
Of course twitter wont change marketing, what has changed is how we think of marketing and especially branding, because of the locus of power gained from the access to information has changed, the power that marketers had has changed.
Where people continue to get it wrong is to think that twitter or any of the other SM channels are merely new titles in the old interruption marketing paradigm. Twitter SPAM will be useless.
Think Different - If you wish to see the value.
BTW you can follow me @walterpike
If you could somehow record every conversation, any potential benefit would be wiped out by the reaction to the perceived invasion of privacy. This holds true for just about every method of trying to collect consumer sentiment, until now.
Of course there is an enormous amount of noise out there right now. In fact, the actual amount of value is probably even smaller than your graph may indicate. I'd like to humbly offer that Twitter's systematic approach to collecting that information, combined with the growing number of tools to filter out that noise, is rapidly evolving what is so far a unique ability to capture raw sentiment in real-time.
Cheers, Dean
Twitter is just another dimestore bauble in the digital jewelry chest, soon to be lost or thrown away with the clutter of this, our most current marketing phase.
To paraphrase the old "Twix is for kids," commercial, "Twitter is for twits." It's not young, hip, cutting-edge, or particularly useful save to the terminally anal who delude themselves into thinking they want to know every time their nearest and dearest friends burp or fart.
In point of fact, teenagers tend to avoid tweeting and laugh at twittering adults the same way they'd laugh at anyone over 45 wearing a sideways baseball cap and using words like "bling."
So, heads-up, all you marketeers who think you've, like, really copped to the next big thing. Once upon a time in a land long ago and far away, Irene Cara assured us she was "gonna live forever, so, baby, remember my name." Well, she didn't and we don't. Surprise, surprise, Sergeant Carter!
But internet marketing "gurus" are actually teaching their acolytes to use Twitter in just that way and those methods are bound to self-destruct. They don't realise that sending along a series of sales messages or an automated stream of news grabs is not "engaging with your audience", and doesn't build interest or loyalty, but loathing.
I recently caught up with a passionate Second Lifer who I met at an art exhibition some two years ago. I asked her how it was going? Totally dead and a waste of six-months of her life was the summary. I asked if she Tweeted - no way. Once bitten, twice shy.
These days, it's hip to refer to Twitter as a "game changer," but when it comes to specifics as to what it delivers on behalf of a brand that other some other social media option can't deliver better and in greater numbers, you hear the room get pretty quiet.
At best, I can see Twitter being used as a permission marketing tool in a toolbox that's already filled with some pretty kick-ass tools.
1) context. I find it very hard to follow conversations with out know the context. Valuable tweets can stand on their own, most don't.
2) Twitter's main question "what are you dong"? problem is I don't care what 99.9% of the folks on twitter are doing 99.9% of the time. And asking people with nothing to say the question what are you doing ends up with millions of uninteresting or self promoting "look at me" tweets, that offer nothing a reader or brand would find useful.
Here's a few I just read
"coffee is for closers. i never touch the stuff myself." -- what???
"Hanging out with my girlz" -- really? we had to know
"there is a screaming baby on my flight make it stop" -- isn't there always a screaming baby on a plane
This is just the tip of the iceberg. I think twitter (or micro blogging will continue to evolve. Just a blogging has, those with something to say and can say it well, will become influencers and therefore valuable to marketers. The rest is noise.
Rafael: You assume "people I care about" means "people I know". That is not what I intended. I meant: "Do I have any interest in you (as a person or organization), your opinions or your actions". If not, I am not going to find your tweets of any value. Maybe that's just me who feels that way, but I'd be very surprised if that were the case.
Jeff: Of course Twitter doesn't have to be young and hip to succeed. I just get tired of middle-aged marketing folks (like myself) pretending that it is. Also, while I may get very little value out of Twitter, I did not mean to suggest that it has no value to anyone. Merely, that for large-scale marketing efforts, Twitter is unlikely to change the marketing landscape because of problems with scale and scope.
Ken: I agree with you that Twitter is a two-way conversation. That's why I believe it's not scalable for most corporate marketing purposes. At a very low level of activity, two way conversations between companies and customers can be exciting and fun. But if you scale this up to a mass level it becomes "customer service" and we all know how much fun those conversations are.
Bob: You seem to believe that Twitter can exist and thrive based on the tiny fraction of a percent that exists at the intersection of my charts. I would disagree. I suspect that to grow and thrive, Twitter requires all active users to post content with the expectation that someone will find it worth reading. If 99.9% of the people on Twitter are not doing this effectively, 99.9% will eventually stop using Twitter. And while a forum for a few select individuals to talk to each other about what they had for lunch may be fun and interesting, it is not a marketing "game changer". It's just another interesting website.
Christopher: I appreciate the argument that I really just need to know Twitter better before I understand the value. I've only been using Twitter for a couple of months. I did go over to @garyvee on Twitter and in the first 3 pages of his tweets, don't see any about Wine. It's all random comments and a thread about his book on marketing. I think this proves my point about Twitter being an echo chamber. If the proof of Twitter's success is that there is a man who has had success selling a book on having success using Twitter. I believe you, but I am not convinced it's a new marketing paradigm.
Granted, Twitter users are not representative of the overall internet population, currently. But that might change in the following months. We'll see.
Twitter culture that I work in is about information and interaction not about pushing produrct messaging. Marketers miss the mark when they merely see easy targets and mass audiences as a reason for using Twitter. Those poor dupes who buy Followers for volume distirbution are not getting reach, they are just making noise.
It is a new concept of two-way social media networking and therefore about sharing and conversation. It invites you to stay on the surface or to go to engagement as you wish. It is not a variation of a traditional marketing messaging or advertising channel as too many conventional selling incrementalists presume.
When in reality this tiny two inches of the internet produces 99% of the content and media online. They are the lips of the web body. This deserves a full rebuttal on my Posterous by the same name. - @journik