Wow! Twitter seems to be hotter than a volcano in the midst of eruption. And the social network has recovered its traffic from the second quarter, when it experienced systematic downtime in June.
Everywhere you go, you see Twitter. Consider the following:
Twitter has become so hot, and in a sustainable way, that it’s become impossible to ignore it. Marketers need to learn how to intelligently integrate Twitter into their online marketing efforts to enable their community to carry the ball forward with word of mouth marketing. The Solutions Stars Video conference owed a great deal of its success to the more than 1000 tweets on the event.
Note that companies can only enable the community, but viral happens when people care enough to talk on their own, not when companies force the matter. Twitter participation is highly interactive and social, so the usual broadcast method won’t work. In addition to active presence, that means providing hashtags, enable tweeting as a bookmark, and executing the proper etiquette. An interesting resource you may want to check out is Warren Whitlock and Deborak Micek’s new book, The Twitter Revolution.
More importantly, what’s next for Twitter? How far can the social microblogging network go?
Updated at 9:30 a.m.
Hey Geoff,
It hit me that Twitter wasn’t our little, niche geeky thing when the anchors on CNN were yammering on constantly about their Twitter accounts, and closing segments by asking people to follow them there.
And yesterday’s Motrin debacle ought to be a bucket of cold water in the face to a number of companies. If you’re not ON Twitter, you sure as heck better be listening to it.
Amber
Interestingly, more than a few Twitterati have suggested the Motrin debacle could have been averted not by focus groups, but by setting up a page and asking Twitter to “crowd source” a reaction to the page. Honestly, I’m not sure about that, but it is fascinating to see minds whirling about how Twitter could be integrated into a pre-advertising research methodology.
And to Amber’s good point, if they aren’t checking beforehand, there is no excuse for NOT monitoring Twitter full time for buzz…
It seems that Twitter is slowly becoming closer to reaching the mainstream market. It already is being used with a lot of case studies, positive (Zappos) and negative (Motrin). They are generating more users and buzz all the time but think the microblog can go as far as its potential revenue model will take it. Without a successful one, I don’t think it’ll hit the maximum mainstream stage.
Craig
http://www.budgetpulse.com
I was watching CNN while cleaning today, and noticed that CNN is using a lot of social media comments during their programming now. Pretty cool.