Preserve Us From The Uncool

Twitter, the once esoteric microblogging utility has "crossed the chasm." It is now popular, if not yet mainstream.

Consider:

In case you missed it, last Friday, 17 April 2009, was "Twitter Day" on Oprah. And Oprah has shown she can move markets, if not mountains. Not only is she on Twitter, but at least for Twitter Day was tweeting live on her show. Oprah herself has in a few days gone from a standing start to over 300 thousand followers. If you want the current stats on the followers, visit her Twitter page and see the block in the upper right corner.

Actor Ashton Kutcher became the first to amass a million followers on Twitter. This was not spontaneous. Rather it was the result of well orchestrated marketing campaign, including — you guessed it — Twitter.

Many radio and TV shows accept or even solicit listener input via Twitter, while businesses and organizations are actively playing with it.

During the presidential campaign of 2008, one Twitter account dominated all others. As you may have guessed this was Barack Obama’s. His campaign understood and applied social media better than any competing candidate. He currently has about 887 thousand followers.

In these depressed times, meteoric success like Twitter's cheers me up - all the more so, because it was so improbable. Who’d a thunk it? Initially the experience of most Twitter users, and I include myself, was not love at first Tweet. Gradually, we found ways of making this lightweight utility pretty darn useful. Each of us did this in different ways with different constituencies.

All is, however, not well in the Twittersphere. It is very likely that increased traffic will strain Twitter’s servers. There will be more temporary interruptions in service just as we had come to depend on Twitter.

Among certain quarters, the objections are more profound and profoundly less rational. That is, by becoming popular, Twitter will loose the cachet it had by being esoteric, counterintuitive, or to many just plain weird. As in one of Yogi’s bon mot "it’s so crowded nobody goes there."

• PR maven and Twitter user Steve Rubel posits the decline of Twitter because the geeks, who were its first patrons, will desert it for the next cool thing.
• Technology analyst Jeremiah Owyang, expects a backlash as Twitter approaches mainstream.
• While PC Magazine columnist Lance Ulanoff laments that “Oprah and Ashton will destroy Twitter."

I don't think so. Email may be uncool, but it's not going away anytime soon. Most of those who joined Twitter only because of Oprah may drop out, unless she starts Tweeting messages relevant to them. Those who find it useful will stay, no matter how they first got there.

Social Networking Or Social Notworking?

At a recent charity breakfast, the topic turned to social media such as Facebook and Twitter. My table mates were intelligent and accomplished people in a variety of careers. Their consensus was that they didn't get it and weren't sure they wanted to. They assumed that these had nothing to offer their professional or personal lives.

Here is my take on why, whatever your cause or concern, you might want to consider using social media.

Social Media - What's In It For Me

Nobody gets Twitter

"Nobody gets Twitter." This was the opinion of Evan Williams, Twitter cofounder and chairman. during an interview in December 2008.

He confirmed what is apparent to many of us and true for most of us - the value of Twitter is not self-evident. With use you start to get the hang of it and at some point the light bulb goes on. His observation is not restricted to Twitter or social media or even technology, though tech examples seem particularly easy to find.

First time users of word processors and spread sheets not to mention such “time savers” as content management systems are usually thwarted by their first attempts to use these technologies. “Easy to use” is easy to say. The same applies to myriads of products from digital video recorders to kitchen appliances.

I once did some field research for a maker of high end appliances. My in home investigations showed customers struggled mightily just to set them up. The manufacturer responded by including an instructional video. The video proved to be so unhelpful, that it increased the return rate. Apparently it convinced customers that the product was too difficult for home use.

Even the fabled iPhone is sufficiently non-intuitive that Apple sells supplemental training. Indeed there is a healthy market on how to use iPhone books – a search Amazon.com’s book section for “ iPhone” returns 1,613 results.

It’s not just the products. Suppliers compound the problem with opaque instruction manuals (if any at all); unsupportive product support (what easier expense to cut in tough times); and compounds these with marketing communications, which fail to communicate.

Making stuff, whether on line systems or garden tools, easier to figure out isn’t easy. I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions. If I were, helping customers, readers, or partners get it might be one.

When The Client Doesn’t Get It

Twitter, is a light weight online service. It is limited, like text messaging, to messages of 140 characters (called Twitters or Tweets). It has the potential to afford rapid two way messaging either broadcast or personalized conversations among customers and partners.

In two years Twitter has grown from nothing to an estimated six million registered users. Other estimates are half of that. Whatever the actual number, it has moved beyond technologists and early adopters and is mentioned in mainstream publications such ad Fortune, Business Week and the Wall St. Journal. Twitter has become a channel in its own right.

The service is free to both individual and corporate users and can be accessed through the Web, mobile phones, or computer software. The potential is there to inform, intervene, monitor and connect with far less overhead and start up costs than email, web, blogging, Facebook, or other social marketing tactics. Its rapid response and low bandwidth make among the ost immediate and compelling of a new crop of mobile applications.

Yet when I suggest Twitter to marketers, who are not already users, their responses range from indifference to rejection. They are seldom even interested in trying it. Why is this?
They ask for clarification - so, what is it? And that’s the problem. It has been described as:

• Light weight social networking
• Micro-blogging
• Instant messaging
• Many to many texting

Huh?

Visiting Twitters home page and viewing the torrent of passing traffic isn’t compelling. Twitter messages, they can indeed seem like self absorbed babbling.

• It doesn’t fit well in any established category
• It seems at least as much abused as well used
• It demands creativity and a degree of innovation from its users. Success will require experimentation and evaluation
• It has the danger to degenerate into online drivel
• Good business cases and “best practices” are just starting to emerge

Twitter’s business model has yet to be developed. It has yet to figure out how to make money. At present, that’s more Twitter’s problem than yours; but you don’t want to invest thought an effort into a medium if it is not like to stay around.

Our old friend ROI is hard to measure. Actually the investment in a Twitter campaign or marketing program can be trivial - no money and Much less effort than say a blogging or Facebook strategy. However it will take some thought, time, and inspiration. It you start a Twitter conversation, be prepared to maintain it.

Twitter is, of course, just one of many media. It has been used successfully by Barack Obama, but less so by Hillary Clinton, and still less by John McCain (based on followers and traffic). Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts use Twitter; Peets Coffee, Folgers, Maxwell House and many others in the category appear not to. Dell and HP use it; Lenovo, Toshiba, and Sony don’t.

Among marketers, technologists, and some media cognoscenti Twitter is cool. This of course is no reason to use it.

What to do:

See if your firm, industry, products or issues are actively discussed on Twitter by searching at search.twitter.com.

Track and follow discussions of those influential in your industry.
Respond, when you have something to contribute.

Even Twitter fans admit it may take some getting used to. It looks quite different after using it for a week or two.

Are a significant number of your customers, or those who might influence your customers using Twitter. If you don’t know, you should to try to.

If they do, Twitter is worth a try. You may gain valuable market insight, test a concept, or launch a guerilla promotion campaign.

Otherwise, you would do better to reach prospects where they are through media they are acquainted with. Leave the cool to someone with venture capital to burn. Even if you’re sure Twitter could be a useful part of the marketing mix, let it go. In the words of the late LL Bean, who left no opinion of Twitter, “Nobody ever won an argument with a customer.”