Twitter's Marketing Strategy
When I first heard about Twitter, I believe my eyes automatically rolled.
I thought, “Really? A service that potentially lets you tell anyone everything that you are doing… sounds dumb.” I envisioned thousands of teenagers sending messages like “At the movie, it’s awesome!” or “Going to the mall, getting shoes” or at it’s worst simply “reading a book”. My mind reeled with innane possibilities and I wrote the whole service off until recently. Why would I want to let everyone in on whatever it is I am doing?
Just a few months ago I took a closer look, after a conversation with a good friend (@justinisenhart), and discovered the amazing potential of the medium. Should bloggers write everyday? Probably. Should they write every hour? I never enjoyed that, even with a team of writers on one blog, the posts become watered down and content fuzzy. Solution? Twitter will let you post your random thought and the beauty is that it’s supposed to be brief. Now you can easily link to the picture of your cat in a puddle of milk without wasting a blog post about it and clogging up feeds. And we can safely ignore, if we so choose, all Tweets since they are but random thoughts and bits of wisdom. I’m becoming a fan.
Now Twitter has released business guidelines to help companies find their voice and purpose in the medium (thanks to b2bsocialmktg for the link). The business applications are incredible, from customer contact, to service, to outreach, to plain old effective listening. And maybe that’s the best reason to use Twitter, it affords us the ability to listen and digest what other people are trying to tell us, especially a business. If someone cares enough to tell you what they think of your business on Twitter, they probably are telling their friends about it too. It also allows a business to give out free and beneficial information, not related to the company or its products, but info that will make the lives the selected audience just a little better. That builds trust and encourages even more communication.
Twitter does and will continue to provide an amazing service to businesses looking to communicate effectively with customers and prospective clients. I can only imagine what the future will hold for this already incredible service.
