Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Is It Really a Waste of Time to Market on Twitter? No.
A February 2010 Edison Research study of Twitter usage and demographics is making the rounds on several blogs, and some readers think they have found a problem for microblogging marketers: Twitter’s failure to convert awareness to usage.
However, that finding is not about brand awareness—unless the brand is Twitter itself. The site rose in popularity last year and got plenty of attention from the mainstream press. The result? Almost as many people have heard of Twitter as Facebook.
At the same time, relatively few people who have heard of Twitter actually use it. That “conversion rate” may be a problem for Twitter itself, though the service still boasts tens of millions of users (and counting), and keeps those users engaged over time.
But for marketers, there is plenty of data to support targeting Twitter. The Edison study itself found more than one-half of Twitter users followed a brand, compared with just 16% of other social network users. Small businesses have found Twitter effective for lead generation, and Twitter users are more likely than Facebook users to respond to brand recommendations from friends. There is also evidence from companies like IBM and Dell that Twitter promotion can make millions.
Skepticism is healthy, but perhaps the most experienced social media marketers are onto something and Twitter marketing is worthwhile.
With several profiles and thousands of posts, Twitter hasn’t produced a single client for me. The only benefit I see is another notch in the SERPS.
John Barremore
Houston, TX
http://www.thevisibledentist.com
GREAT REPORT!
I’ve retweeted this twice, I think its a great article. I had someone follow me the other day, I noted she also had a linkedin profile. So the connection was made on Twitter, we connected on LinkedIn, and now she’s working helping and volunteering for our group! And she has 17,000 followers. Moreover, if and when someone like that “retweets” you, you are exposed to more ppl.
Twitter also works great as a search engine, as the user can control what data flows across his/her screen. It also saves time by being an efficiency tool. Our tweets can be displayed on iGooge, itself an efficiency tool and on our LinkedIN profile, so we are not having to go back and forth.
Mr. Efficiency http://www.twitter.com/WorldsBestTips
[...] http://www.emarketer.com/blog/index.php/waste-time-market-twitter/ [...]
“Small businesses have found Twitter effective for lead generation, and Twitter users are more likely than Facebook users to respond to brand recommendations from friends.”. I do agree to this, in part.
I’m more of a visual person, personally. Since Twitter obviously has no space for visual ad’s, advertising on this medium doesn’t really appeal to me. I’d favor creating awareness about the brand, and attracting people to more reading material around your brand on Twitter.
Here’s an excerpt from a blog by my colleague Marc Perramond (Product Manager, InsideView) on how Twitter is being used by our users. This blog was written on the occasion of our Twitter integration completing a year: “Similar to the adoption pattern for our Facebook mash-up and LinkedIn integration before, customers and prospects started to identify and leverage actionable sales intelligence from the social media stream. One of my favorite anecdotes comes from a meeting with the VP of Sales at a key customer account a few months after we launched the Buzz tab. As part of our regular quarterly account review we walk customers through recent features & enhancements. This included the Buzz tab at the time so we had him bring up the SalesView Buzz tab (i.e. Twitter & Google blog search) for his own company.
As it turned out, one of the most recent Tweets mentioning his company was a person looking for competitive product recommendations:
* “We’re evaluating marketing automation solutions – (our customer) vs. (competitor #1) vs. (competitor #2). Thoughts?”
TA-WEET! Yes, that was a hot lead and yes he was impressed. The icing on the cake was that within a few minutes the VP of Sales had logged in to see the Buzz tab for himself and by that time someone had already responded as follows:
* “Definitely (competitor #1)… we went through the selection process over 1 year ago and have been happy since.”
TWUH-OH! He interrupted our meeting to make sure the right sales rep followed up on this lead immediately, before his competitor (or their fans) could further slant the conversation to their favor.” Read the full article here: http://bit.ly/aBhIwC
I also mention some of my ideas on B2B businesses using Social Media here: http://bit.ly/cLwKjZ
[...] while there is high awareness of microblogging, usage is much lower. Edison Research found that while 87% of US consumers had heard of Twitter, only 7% used it. A company’s presence on a microblog may mean little to US internet users who have not taken part [...]
[...] while there is high awareness of microblogging, usage is much lower. Edison Research found that while 87% of US consumers had heard of Twitter, only 7% used it. A company’s presence on a microblog may mean little to US internet users who have not taken part [...]
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Conrad Lisco, Tony Santos and Kyle Hawke, Stella Wong. Stella Wong said: RT @conradlisco: While 87% of US consumers have heard of Twitter, only 7% use it. 50% follow a brand – http://bit.ly/am0Wm8 [...]
[...] eMarketer says, “Is it a waste of time to market on Twitter? No.” [...]
Twitter may not be as popular as Facebook, but every day more people join and it really could explode.
http://www.insightsfordentists.com