- Knowledge Base
- Charities and Social Media
- External Insight
- Categories and Classifications
- Facebook Techniques
- Marketing Techniques
- Mobile
- Social Media Ethics
- Social Media Legal Issues
- Social Media Strategy
- Reasons Every Business Needs to be on Twitter
- 10 Proven Applications For Social Media
- 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips
- 10 Ways a Start-Up Can Use Social Media to Market Itself
- 5 Social Media Myths
- 5 Warning Signs of a Weak Social Media Strategy
- A Blog is a Better Social Media Hub Than Twitter
- Are You Taking Social Media Shortcuts?
- Are You ‘Living’ or ‘Existing’ in Social Media?
- Brands need to be careful about joining the social media bandwagon
- Business Development
- Creating a Social Networking Strategy
- Curating, not moderating, the flow of content and participation
- Don't Be Transparent, Be Authentic Instead
- Europe View: Coke, Unilever Drop Campaign Sites in Favour of Social Media
- Evolution: The Eight Stages Of Listening
- Financial Services: Branding and Trust
- Five Benefits of Social Media Marketing
- Free Tools for Social SEO
- Having A Punt On Social Media
- How To Increase Your Business By Relinquishing Control
- How to Use Article Marketing as Part of Your Social Media Strategy
- How to maximize revenue through social media
- How “Social” is Your Bank?
- How-To: Influence Influencers- Bloggers, Tweeters & Others
- Medical research and social media: Can wikis be used as a publishing platform in medicine?
- Opporunities and Risks with Twitter Advertising
- Optimizing Brands for Social Search
- PubCon 2009: How Major Vegas Hotels Are Using Social Media
- Should a Blog or Twitter be Your Social Media Hub?
- Social Media Checklist for Small and Medium Size Businesses
- Social Media Is Not a Condiment
- Social Media Success In 1 Step: Education
- Social Media: Engage and Change
- Social Media: The Science of Eavesdropping
- Social media: the best and worst of 2009
- Ten Things Social Media Can't Do
- The 10 Stages of Social Media Business Integration
- The Awareness Scale: How Social Media, PR & Advertising Now Work Together
- The Big Three Social Networks Have Emerged as Professional Networks: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter
- The Brand Dashboard: A Window to Relevance
- The Four Spheres Of Social Media Strategy
- There’s an I in Twitter and a ME in Social Media
- Twitter hasn't hit the mainstream yet and won't for some time
- Use Social Media to spot issues before they hit the Contact Center!
- Where Brands Can Engage Customers On Twitter And Social Networks
- Why Social Media Is Vital to Corporate Social Responsibility
- Word of Mouth from non-loyal customers has the biggest impact on sales
- You May Monitor For Crises, But Do You Monitor For Opportunity?
- Social Media Techniques
- Social Media Technology
- Social Media Time Management
- Social Media Traps and Risks
- Social Media and Blogs
- Social Media and IFAs
- Social Media and ROI
- Social Media and Search
- Transforming Your Organisation for Social Media
- Trends and Statistics
- Twitter Techniques
- Membership Organisations and Social media
- Social Media Tools Defined
Email
In the hype stakes, Twitter won in 2009. The media was obsessed, the conference season was dominated by 140 characters and every brand was bolting on the inevitable Twitter page. Such was the praise that it was quite refreshing to hear Ricky Gervais at The Golden Globes recently being cynical about the motives of celebrities who tweet. Clearly the technology is brilliant and the openness of the service is a vision for the future of the web. Even better, for the marketer the ability to capture brand mentions and identify customers in real time is truly exciting. But is it the game-changer we’re led to believe? Are we moving into a real-time future when we all report our lives, thoughts and actions as they happen via Twitter and similar services? According to Global Web Index research, Twitter didn’t make it out of niche markets last year. Just 5.3% of UK web users were active users (that is, used it on a monthly basis) and by January 2010 this was just 6.5%. This situation was mirrored in other developed web markets, with the US at 6.8% and Japan 8%. More tellingly, the number of lapsed UK users had risen to 13%. The most active users are 16-24-year-olds (13%) and 25-34-year-olds (11%), versus 1% of 55-64-year-olds, demonstrating a clear age skew common with many forms of networked contribution online. The most active employment category for involvement is advertising and marketing, with 25% being active users. This is followed by people who work in IT and computing, of whom 15% being actively tweeting. The tricky issue is that, as with all fast-growing, free-to-access services, many people who sign up don’t remain active. In the UK, just 26% of Twitter uses tweet daily, 24% weekly and 50% less frequently. This means the micro-blogging service is supporting millions of accounts with little or no potential to generate revenue. So what can we expect in 2010? Twitter will still be around, but we believe its growth won’t to take it mainstream as per its stated objective to “become the pulse of the web”. The key finding for marketers is not to assume that Twitter is a must-have in any digital strategy. It can work brilliantly, but you must remember what customers you’ll engage with.
|
|||
Printer-friendly version
