I wanted to call out an interesting thought piece I saw on the Conversation Agent blog today.
Marketers are often excited about riding the wave of every new channel or technology medium for reaching customers. There is a sense of cache, but there is also this sense that if you get in first, you can actually rise above the background noise and make your message heard. In recent years, this has meant embracing social media as part of brand building. The latest darling, of course, is Twitter.
The issue is that too often the medium becomes the message and as marketers we forget the role each channel plays in the ongoing dialogue between brands and customers. Also, all too often, we treat these mediums as a chance to shout at customers but never to really communicate with them.
I like this piece by Tony Hung. It provides insight into what this medium is – and is not – in the context of dialogue between brands and their customers.
He urges that brand managers view Twitter as a way to do three things:
- really listen to customers,
- show your commitment to participating in direct dialogue and
- identify and interact with true thought leaders.
Most interesting: Tony Hung is not a marketer. He’s an internal-medicine physician that just happens to be passionate about social media, especially Twitter. He blogs at Deep Jive Interests.
I’d take a moment to check out his piece.
Spend an afternoon watching your Twitter feed and you’ll find it’s quite an interesting place. I’ve been enjoying exploring Twitter — for both personal and professional reasons — over the past several weeks.
I agree with most of the people out there talking about how best to use Twitter — that it’s helpful to listen and engage — particularly for consumer-focused brands.
However, I would argue that it’s like any other tool — it’s only as valuable as the time/resources you invest in it. Trying to keep up with Twitter is a science I have not yet perfected!.
In my experience, I have several times learned information I would never have heard otherwise on Twitter — and I’ve found there’s a very healthy group of social media experts, PR pros and journalists using this tool. Good place to be if you play in my industry, but you’ll have to figure that out for yourself to find out the value for yours.
Just checked the twitter website, very interesting. Suddenly realized how fast it world is changing and how hard it is for me to keep up with the pace. Sigh…..
Meanwhile, two thoughs came to my mind:
1) Yes, it is so true that companies need to consider/use media in a more meaningful way so as to communicate with target audience more effectively.
2) As Christine said, “it’s only as valuable as the time/resources you invest in it.”
So considering today professionals leading a busy life, I am wondering how these new things could grow further in already cluttered internet communication market.
Thank you Adam for sharing your thoughts!
@ Christine – You make a good point we need to keep in mind as marketers. Twitter is a new channel, but what it offers isn’t so new … just a different spin on it. We need to look at the time and energy invested in it just like any other marketing communication channel.
@ Jeffrey – There’s a nuance to your comment that is worth exploring further. Everything is a trade-off. So if as marketers we are spending time on Twitter, what is the trade-off. Similarly, as customers move to and embrace Twitter, what are they giving up. AOL IM? Updating their FaceBook ‘what I’m up to’ line? New channels mean that old channels go dark. We can’t do everything; so where can we maximize engagement with our customers?
Good thoughts!
The appeal of Twitter still escapes me. One of these days, I will catch on. But in the meantime, this conversation raises the question: to what extent must we stay connected to the latest and greatest communication channels to stay connected to our customers? The answer: it depends on our customers. I’m not going to regret my lack of Twitter savvy. Not until my customers need me to.
But thanks to this blog post, maybe I will take another stab at Twitter anyway.
@ Sarah – I think you raise a good point. In fact, this is something I talked about in another one of my pieces on this site.
As marketers, we need to embrace the idea of proportionality — i.e., our commitment to different old and new mediums should be proportional to the mind share lent to it by our customers. At the same time, it is difficult as a marketer to predict massive shifts in the proper proportionality we dedicate to different mediums, and that’s why we need to be on the lookout for new and emerging mediums so that we can move when the time is right.
This latter point is very much the story of the ‘place-based media’ or ‘out-of-home advertising’ segment — which I am posting on this week; I don’t know that it has really been taken seriously for many years, but suddenly it is getting traction and exploding. Now, the difference with place-based media is that it is not a consumer pull story; rather, it is more about the maturity of the medium. But it is still an example of an emerging medium that has more mind share than in the past and (as consumers abandon other mediums) it deserves being paid attention to. As marketers, we can’t wait until the bandwagon arrives. We have to move sooner rather than later if we are going to gain competitive advantage within the medium.
That is why Twitter is interesting and important.
My wife (who is a contributor on this site) also noted to me that she is using Twitter to improve how she is listening to influencers and end-users as a technology-PR professional. So for her, it’s not so much about speaking to customers as it is getting their input. And she has said that on many occassions she has gotten unique insights via Twitter she would have had no access to via other channels.
Either way, this whole dialogue is worthwhile to be having. As marketers, we must always ask two questions about new mediums: How important is it to my customer (proportionally speaking)? And what role does it play in the ongoing, two-way dialogue I should always be having with my customer around my company/brand?
Great dialogue!
[...] This is a topic I’ve noted before and is inherent to platforms such as Twitter (discussed in a previous blog piece). Are the channels you’re using to communicate with your brand community one-way or two? Are [...]
A quick update …
Just saw this WSJ piece today on Twitter becoming more mainstream.
A great update on our previous discussion thread here.
Check out the link at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122461906719455335.html?mod=todays_us_the_journal_report