A question posed on Twitter this week asked “What are the benefits of twitter from a marketing perspective?” My immediate response was “it’s turbo-charged ‘word of mouth’…for good and bad things”.
Despite having markedly different uses and meanings to people, there can be no doubting Twitter’s power for spreading information by ‘word of mouth’. The old adage used to be that if your organisation provided someone with a particularly pleasant experience, they’d tell their immediate friends, family and colleagues – more so if they were unhappy! If it was a particularly strong sound-bite, those people would tell further people, potentially increasing the exposure of that initial communication.
However, the internet now enables those discussions to take place on a global and potentially lingering platform. Comments, good or bad, tend to hang around longer on the internet than if spoken over the garden fence, printed in a newspaper, or even featured on a consumer affairs television programme. Whilst there are many means for ‘word of mouth’ to operate on the internet, I think that Twitter has some particularly pertinent features:
* It’s in real-time: So word gets out VERY quickly. People use Twitter as they’re doing and experiencing things – they post their ‘tweets’ as and when things happen. So if someone’s say sat in a restaurant enjoying/hating the experience, they give a live commentary to the world via their mobile phones.
*Re-tweeting: This is where other people re-post your tweet – typically referencing you as the originator. Even if a user has a small number of followers, it only takes a small percentage of those to ‘re-tweet’ a posting for the exposure of the message to snowball. Interestingly, people will generally only ‘re-tweet’ something that they think will be useful/interesting/entertaining to the people who follow their twitter stream. Re-tweeting rubbish could knock their personal credibility!
There’s a move in some corners to avoid the “cut and paste” nature of re-tweeting and regurgitate the posting in your own words – referencing the originator as “via @username”. The effect is similar – although there’s some risk that the real gist of the originators post might be lost in interpretation!
* Twitter Search: Potentially a goldmine for marketers. Twitter search enables you to find out what people are saying about almost anything you can think of. Here are a few examples of what people have recently said about two randomly selected companies:
Poundland http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Poundland
“You know poundland do hip-flasks now. AMAZING. my nights out will never be halted due to no more funds. Whoop!”
“Just been watching a great DVD, ‘Unseen Beatles’. Poundland, £1. Total bargain.”
“I’m a regular Poundland customer although I do draw the line at Lidl even I have (some) standards.”
Sainsburys http://search.twitter.com/search?q=sainsburys
“I have a new god, and its name is Sainsburys Southern Fried Chicken Wrap. Mmm mmm.”
“Has anyone tried the strawberries and jersey cream yoghurts from sainsburys? Their delicious. Try them”
“Loving this weather but well pissed off about pervy builders outside Sainsburys.”
It’s not just the big names that get a mention, almost anything can be found – and it’s a real Pandora’s box. Try typing expletives in the search function and it churns up all sorts of nasties – at the time a writing there’s a person very annoyed with 02!
So what should marketing types do about all this, if anything? It’s certainly a challenge, not least because it often seems in the psyche of marketing people to want to control everything – and here they really can’t, since their brand guidelines document isn’t enforceable on the public! However, I still think Twitter is a great little tool in the marketer’s toolbox – my thoughts, for what they’re worth, are:
1) LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN! It’s all too easy to jump in with both feet by setting up an account and following as many people as you can find, before spamming them with press release-esque announcements. Stop! I believe that the most valuable thing a marketer can get out of Twitter directly is by listening. Use the search function to see what people might be saying about you, your competitors, similar products and services, etc.
Marketers and their managers seem to shy away from such raw insight – after all, you can’t easily generate statistics and create pie-charts for your boardroom presentations which such raw information. However, unlike questionnaires and even focus groups, people’s thoughts on Twitter must rank as the most natural and spontaneous insight that you’re ever likely to capture.
2) Actually, this step isn’t so much for marketers – it’s for the entire organisation. In order to induce positive conversation about you on Twitter, you need to strive to deliver on your promises 100% of the time and exceed people’s expectations. If you do that, the natural positive word of mouth thing will happen – without a hint of a corporate Twitter account harassing people with announcements.
3) If you must set up a corporate account to ‘tweet’ your marketing messages, do so in a way that actually provides a service/benefit to your audience. They need to get something from following you – not merely news that you think is important. Personally, I’m also against trawling through Twitter and following as many people as you can, in the hope they follow you back. Promote the benefits of your Twitter ‘service’ through your usual channels – and pull people towards you that way.
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