Socialmedialand

Archive for October, 2008

There’s been a lot of talk about Twitter circulating throughout the industry over the last few months so I’m going to try not to repeat too much of what’s already been said but I would like offer up my view of Twitter’s impact on all of us.

A majority of my time during the day is spent “monitoring” social media for various clients. Monitoring is just a fancy word for listening, watching and reading as much content as I can about my brands. I use Radian6 (my favorite) and a few other tools and integrate everything I learn into a concise report that summarizes what’s being said in the blogosphere. I realize this isn’t revolutionary and even at times I’m frustrated by how far behind we are because none of this includes responding to any of it. But more on that later.

The main reason why this is important is that across all my brands over the last few months I’ve seen a marked increase in the amount of Twitters showing up in my reports over time.

I thought this was interesting, mainly because it was across the board in at least 4 different industries. The timing was also a little funny to me because it coincided with about the same time that I, and a few of my coworkers, became active on Twitter. So in my personal view it felt like all of a sudden Twitter went from the “next big thing” to “the big thing.” This prompted a little research to see if it was all in my head or if there really had been a huge spike – check it out from two different sources:

Courtesy of Quantcast

Courtesy of Compete.com

Ok so now comes the disconnect in my life – I think Twitter is really fun and I have Twhirl up on my desktop at work all day, but as for my personal life, I never use it. A quick background, I’m 22 years old and graduated from ASU in May, so most of my friends are still in college or are recent grads like me, all in their early to mid 20s. This is completely unscientific but if I had to guess how many of them knew what Twitter was – I’d go with 10%. I can’t even begin to illustrate the trouble I have explaining what I do, and what Twitter is, to a guy my age at a bar. Or to my best friends. It just doesn’t click with them. The best I’ve come up with is “You know Facebook status? It’s an entire site of just you and your friends’ statuses.” But if there was a huge spike in activity, why do so few “young” people know what it is? I did a little more research on the average age group of Twitter users:

Courtesy of Google Ad Planner

Courtesy of Quantcast

And here you go, the main age group for Twitter isn’t the 18-25 college kids, it’s the 25-45 educated, working adults. As soon as I saw that, it all clicked into place.

Disclaimer: the rest of this post is based on pure theory…

My reasoning goes that when you’re in college sites like Facebook are the best way to keep in touch. You have the extra time in boring classes, or procrastinating on homework, to do all the extra legwork. You upload videos, painstakingly upload and tag pictures; you stalk people’s walls to see what they’re up to and write them messages. But what about when you grow up a little and get a job? All of a sudden all of that takes way too much time. In a completely unscientific poll of the people I work with who sit near me – all of them told me they gave up on maintaining their Facebook profile the way they used to and now they check it weekly or even bi-weekly.

Enter Twitter. Twitter is quick and fun – no extra work here. Simply write a message and voila all your friends know what’s going on. Want to Twitter at work? No problem, install a small desktop app that’s easily minimized and looks almost like email updates. You can’t have your Facebook page up at work – way to conspicuous, and takes way too much time, your boss would totally figure out what you’re up to. Twitter is the perfect way to continue to socialize all day long while you’re working. And since it’s caught on so well, it’s even started to integrate into how we work, collaborate and network. Some sites are even basing innovating new work place message systems on the Twitter format.

And all of that is what I think becomes the basic support for why brands can’t ignore Twitter anymore. Social media has become a part of our daily life. It’s not like Trix and “just for kids.” It’s become an integral part of daily communication for a lot of people, including working professionals. Do I think every company should just jump onto Twitter? No, of course not. No one technology will solve a brand’s need to participate in the social sphere. But do I think it’s become a crucial part of the social media marketing mix? Yes.

But this is just my opinion and experience with Twitter, what do you think? Leave me a comment below!

I’m a huge fan of Groundswell and Charlene Li. I often refer to both the book and the Social Technographics Profile Tool provided by Forester at work. It’s a great way to kick start the conversation with clients about why social media has become such an important piece of the online marketing mix.  I just went back over to the site today to get a screenshot of the profile tool when I noticed it had been updated with 2008 data. I think the difference between the old version and the new version speaks for itself:

Technographics Profile – 2007

Technographics Profile 2007

Technographics Profile – 2008

Technographics Profile 2008

I recently set up an account for Sitewire on Twitter (@SitewireAgency) so we can put out links to cool things we find, let people know when our blog’s been updated, etc. For right now only D (my teammate) and I are responsible for updating it. Since I have Twhirl running on my desktop for my personal account (@ktvan) I just added another account so I would have both. Sounds like a great idea huh? I thought so too. Until I was leaving for lunch to go home and walk my friend’s dog (who’s staying with me over the weekend) and decided to Twitter a joke about it right before I left…at the last second I realized I’d updated the company account instead of my own! It was easy enough to delete the update and move it into my account…but I still wonder if anyone else with a desktop app saw it before I fixed it?