Last month I hit a minor milestone – my 3000th tweet. Ok so I’m not as prolific as some tweeps but my time on Twitter has been more than fruitful – so fruitful in fact that I had to write a post to help me take stock of all that had happened since I started on Twitter.
The conclusion of my reflection was that it was all about connections. So I guess that’s why it alarms me when I see posts like Dan Schwables “RIP Twitter as a marketing platform“.
Dan’s premise for this bold claim is that there is more clutter due to the huge number of users on Twitter. Essentially he is saying that everyone is broadcasting and no one is listening, or as Gavin Heaton recently said in a comment here on iThnk without interaction we’re all just shouting into the wind.
On the flip side, in a great mashable post from March this year they examined a new study from security firm Barracuda Labs. The results don’t back up Dan Schwables claims about the clutter on Twitter, the stats say that most of its users aren’t very active at all.
There is quite a lot of chat going on about the amount of self-proclaimed Social Media experts popping up on Twitter right now. I wasn’t horribly surprised when I read that the number of (for the sake of this post I’m going to call them Social Media Pros or SMPS) had exploded from 4,487 to nearly 16,000 in just seven months – check out B.L. Ochman’s blog.
If you are a SMP (or if at least that is how you want to make a name for yourself), of course you will be doing it on Twitter. Go to a conference about the adverse affects of smoking and I’d expect you would find more than a few health professionals. From time to time I experience a sensation others tell me is known as “common sense”. Right now it’s telling me not all the SMPs on Twitter are actually legit; but it is fair to expect an over-representation on one of the most popular SM platforms.
The thing that really jumped out at me about the new spate of SMPs was the names that some of these aficionados give themselves…The first is the SM Guru. Fair to say the Gurus already get the flack they probably deserve online. Watch the video below to see what I’m talking about. (sorry about the language).
I do like the term “Social Media Ninja” though. If you are going to give yourself a ridiculous title you might as well make it hilarious. I feel as if not all 79 of these Ninjas are just having fun with it. I’d say some do actually think their social media savvy is Ninja-esque . The question is would you seriously employ someone that claimed to be a Ninja to work on you SM strategy? I wouldn’t.
On a more constructive note the stats did get me to thinking about what it means to be a social media expert, and what allows someone to call themselves that? Obviously having a formal qualification would be a start. Funnily enough a quick Google search told me Birmingham City University is now offering a masters course in the field. Master of social media, is that cooler than being a Ninja? Na. I do enjoy the Q and A section of the Birmingham site: “Become a social media consultant (and understand what that means)”. If you can’t work that one out perhaps you should rethink enrolment in a post-graduate program?
So in the future there WILL be qualified social media “experts”. But how do the current mix earn their stripes? Experience? Trial and error? Who knows really. I’m betting the majority are far less proficient than they claim to be. As I’ve mentioned in other posts I believe SM is just one element of the marketing mix. Just as there has been advertising experts in marketing for decades, now you get SM experts too. Over time the actual “gurus” will emerge and the pretenders will hopefully find some other fad bandwagon to jump on, or off.
Last week in a cute little chapel somewhere in cyber space there was a three way marriage between Twitter, Google and Bing.
A large part of this agreement centres around Google & Bing including Twitter updates in their search results. Just as a marriage between two foreign monarchs of old brought about changes for their peasants, the union of these three online heavy weights has huge implications for businesses around the world.
Advertising Dies A Little More
Yes this is another nail in the coffin of the broadcasting model. Running expensive advertising campaigns will generate even less ROI if you’re not delivering real value. Don’t even bother advertising if you can’t provide great customer service.
Why? Because real-time tweets mean up to the second word-of-mouth, last year’s customer service record means less than ever. If you’re a firm that prides yourself on quality goods and great service real-time tweets aren’t going to be too much of a problem. But if you’re making dodgy products, duping your customers, or if your just plain rude; then you may not be able to sell anything online ever again. As soon as one Tweep receives poor service, anyone, even if they’ve never sent a tweet in their life will see it in their search results.
Join The Conversation
If the benefits of listening, talking, engaging and energising your community hasn’t already convinced you to join the convo and jump on the twitter bandwagon then perhaps you’ll be sold by the prospect of twitter becoming one of the major ways we find the products and services that we purchase.
Active members of the conversation will benefit from this three-way union in many ways. They will gain more followers as their tweets are able to be found with more ease. People will tweet and retweet them more meaning that they gain more Google juice. As a result more products and services will be sold.
You Must Be Responsive
We are increasingly searching online before making purchases for a myriad of commodities. With these juggernaut’s combining forces we’ll soon be able to access real-time information about your business so being responsive is more important than ever. As we have seen over the years poor customer service that is left unattended online can become a viral nightmare, ala Dell Hell. Responding to negative feedback and being active in the social web is now a must.
Take the ego out of your business and realise that your products and services are only as good as we say they are. This has always been the case, but never before has this word of mouth been so searchable.
Start A Blog!
Why? There are loads of reasons to blog, but the newest reason will be that to make the most of this heavy weight marriage you will need to produce interesting content for people to tweet about.
The benefits you receive from blogging will depend on the content that you’re creating. But if you’re active on twitter and people are tweeting about your content then you’re almost guaranteed to see improved search ranking; loads of incoming links are like popularity votes which create higher rankings for your website.
I’m sure there are loads more issues and benefits that come from this cyberspace ceremony and I’d love to hear about the ones you’re interested in.
Recently a contact of mine told me that she’d been to a conference where an exec from Mindshare claimed that Twitter would be face down in the gutter within two years.
She asked me what I thought and to be quite honest I fumbled a weak and rather unconvincing response.
I’m not sure why I was so taken aback. When others have declared similar things before I, like all people who live in the socialsphere realise that almost everything has it’s day in the sun before shrinking slowly into the shadows. But truthfully the thought of Twitter dying so soon after its explosion into the mainstream hadn’t actually crossed my mind.
In my weak and unconvincing response I tried promote the merits of twitter that make the likelihood of it dying within two years unlikely. I don’t think my answer fully satisfied her, and I left the meeting kicking myself that I hadn’t answered her query with more conviction.
This is what I should have said:
“Twitter very well may die one day, it’s definitely undergoing a major shift in the way people use it. But because of the connections made through twitter and the shear mass of information being shared; there’s still an enormous amount of value to be discovered”.
Twitter’s Strengths
Shear Mass
With hundreds of millions of users sharing 140 characters there’s a whole load of information being shared. With Google now on the case, real time search is closer than ever. This means you’ll be able to search for what people are saying all over the web about breaking news topics, your favorite celebrity, hometown sports team, and anything else; which means you’ll use Twitter to stay on top of the day’s events.
Valued Connections
Regardless of whether you’re broadcasting your message, sharing links, or engaging in conversation with other tweeps; if people are following you, you’re creating value. The value of these connections builds up through your interaction which makes Twitter harder and harder to leave.
Amazing Links
I’ve spent a large part of 2009 interrogating people about their blog reading habits. Whenever my interviewees have mentioned twitter they’ve all mentioned the great links that they’ve found and used to populate their RSS reader.
User-based improvements
Twitter’s involvement in ‘Get Satisfaction’ and it’s constant focus on user based improvements means that as our needs for instant communication change so will Twitter.
3rd Party Apps
You probably know that there are loads of third party Twitter applications, what this does is keep Twitter “open”. Open to change beyond their control. So even if @Ev and @Biz don’t see how our needs are changing other people will be able to adapt Twitter so that @Ev and @Biz don’t have to.
Why It won’t Matter if Twitter Does Die
If Twitter dies it means that something(s) far greater has taken it’s place. That real time search is being preformed better without our 140 character updates, we’re making more valuable connections elsewhere, and/or we’ve found a better way to discover links to help fill our RSS readers. It also means that all the user-based improvements and 3rd party apps weren’t able to keep up with new innovations in communication technologies.
If/when something new does all this I doubt too many of us will lament Twitter’s passing. We’ll all be too busy playing with the new geek toy.
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