What is your Twitter strategy?
Many brands are on Twitter because they believe its required table stakes. You have to be on Twitter because millions of people and all your competitors are. Yet these same brands post the same stuff on Twitter as they do elsewhere and generally complain about how hard it is to define unique content, spawn free viral distribution or measure the business impact or value of all those tweets.
Twitter seems to be a barometer of the global news cycle, an early warning radar for trends or shifting popular tastes and a companion/commentary/feedback medium for TV, live music, pop culture, sports and theatrical events. But brands can get the benefit of these insights without investing in pages, content, moderation or sponsored tweets.
Twitter is a news ticker dominated by news organizations and pundits of all stripes. The amount of re-tweeted material is almost equal to the original content. Finding a unique voice, a persuasive posting cadence and enough engaging content to keep up with the constant ticker pace with compelling or unique content sufficient to prompt significant numbers of re-tweets, comments or riffs is a real stretch for many marketers.
Several of my clients are asking if Twitter is still worth their time and treasure. They are trying to understand what role Twitter plays in their marketing mix and trying to justify continued spending on a labor-intensive media channel with uncertain returns.
Initially there were many claims about customer service on Twitter. A few brands are doing a notable job. Yet 99 percent of customer service issues are still handled on branded websites and 800 numbers. And while many brands continue to respond to customer concerns on Twitter, its not considered mission critical nor is there data to prove the assumed brand halo that supposedly comes from tweeted customer satisfaction.
Twitter has been touted as a cost efficient coupon distribution tool. And there is research to show that coupons are both downloaded and redeemed on Twitter at greater rates than on Facebook or branded websites. But how much are brands willing to spent to cater to deal whores who may or may not ever return to their stores and sites or pay full price for anything?
Twitter can be a fast way to get news about brands, products and marketplace or competitive developments out quickly. But even using the #hashtag convention as a reach extender, reach is function of the number of followers you can amass and brands generally trail celebrities and news organizations in this category by significant margins. So much so that a cottage industry has sprung up among B, C and D list celebrities selling their popularity and followers via tweets on behalf of brands. It’s not clear if Twitter news distribution trumps e-mail, web publishing and ePR techniques for either reach, virility or engagement.
Its beginning to feel like Twitter is a novelty act that doesn’t have either the communications or business impact that brands can get from other social media networks.
So what’s your Twitter strategy? Where do you stand?
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