Micro blogging: The Power of 140 Characters
Posted by Guillame Foutry @ October 13th, 2008 in Social Marketing
Google, besides all the tools it has provided, has also given a new verb to the English language: to google something.
Twitter, the king of micro blogging, is about to do the same. With 2.3 million US based users, the company has coped with a 422% increase in one year, which shows the concept of micro blogging (expressing yourself on 140 characters or so to people that “follow” you) is sprawling beyond the geek world.
Twitter (and its counterparts Pownce, Plurk and Jaiku) has evolved from a service limited to exchange of information between users to a tool increasingly present in the different aspects of our lives. Many of the most notorious bloggers such as Robert Scoble offer their readership the possibility to follow them. Twitter even set up a special website for the first debate of the American presidential election and the service is largely used by both Obama and McCain.
Businesses have not waited to invade this new space: Dell encourages its employees (e.g. TomAtDell ) to be ambassadors by using it to communicate with customers and to promote the brand. Now it goes beyond that with a Twitter for business: Yammer and Presently let co-workers share ideas and information at the workplace.
There can be plenty of marketing possibilities if the use for customer relationship and promotions is obvious (free, direct and quick spread of information). You can advertise on twitter and then reach a mostly tech-savvy audience. Remember that like many of the web 2.0 wonders, it is a double-edge sword and backlashes are always around the corner, so be cautious.
The recent growth of twitter suggests that we may not be a mature means of communication and it will be used by far more people in the coming years. It will also take new shapes, such as the increasing use of video: twiddeo enables people to communicate through short video messages.
If you are not on Twitter and want to use it for marketing purposes, the first step would be to create an account… and to twit about this article.
Last 5 posts in Social Marketing
- Twitter's Red Carpet Era- the real and the fake users - March 11th, 2010
- B2B companies increasing interactive marketing spend and using social media - March 4th, 2010
- Small businesses learn from the big guys and adopt social media - March 2nd, 2010
- Online social network advertising spending up, up, up - February 18th, 2010
- Social Media involvement and evolution - February 10th, 2010
Comments
The Lovable Rogue
October 14th, 2008
Twitter is interesting. Despite the character limitations, if used for long enough, you can clearly see the business potential of the application. I only started using the software a few months back, but I am already beginning to see the community benefiting from the contributions of those in their networks. Points are collaboratively developed, thus allowing a more developed response to a problem. This once again highlights the value of networks.