LIBERATE COLLABORATE DARE TWITTER: SOCIAL EXPERIENCE SHARE READ
wHAt IS twIttER?
wHAt IS MAKING It SO POPuLAR?
Twitter is a cross between a social network, a blogging service and an RSS reader.
While social networks like Facebook are built around mutual friendships, Twitter has a more open and public framework- someone you follow might be a friend or colleague, but could just as well be a celebrity. As a result, there are authors, comedians, journalists and musicians gathering considerable followings on Twitter.
Like a social network, users choose who they want to “follow”, and their “friends” are those who follow them back. Like a blog, users build up a timeline of their posts (or “tweets”), but with the limitation that messages can be no longer than 140 characters. This means that messages are kept short and to the point (although they can include links to other web pages, or to photos or videos.) And like an RSS reader, users can see a timeline of all of the tweets from their selected friends, with the most recent appearing at the top.
This “open” nature also means that conversations can easily spread beyond your own circle of friends and followers, and the bite-sized nature of a “tweet” means that it is easy to quickly read through a lot of them- and to quickly write them. In turn, this also means it’s even easier than ever for a story or link to be passed on (or “retweeted”) and to spread virally. A Twitter function that makes this process even faster is the “hashtag”- words preceded by a “#” symbol that allow users to see all the tweets that include that particular tag, meaning that massive conversations can happen beyond those between users and their own followers. So instead of a story growing over a few days as it is rewritten and passed on through blogs, emails and other social sites, it can now explode in a matter of minutes- as demonstrated in January when Flight1549 made an emergency landing on the Hudson River in New York. The hashtag “#flight1549” quickly emerged on tweets about the landing and over a hundred pages of Twitter messages about it were generated within just an hour- including tweets and photos sent from mobile phones. Similarly, an earthquake in Los Angeles last year led to 50,000 tweets before the Associated Press reported it 9 minutes later
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wHO IS uSING It?
wHY ARE twIttERERS IMPORtANt?
Twitter has received a good deal of media attention thanks to celebrity Twitterers such as Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross and Barack Obama, and its audience has grown rapidly this year. Twitter.com already had nearly a quarter of a million visitors in the UK at the end of 2008, but by March 2009, it had increased tenfold to just under 2.4 million. Its users are also older than you might expect; rather than the typical “early adopters” profile of young, male users, 60% of its audience is over the age of 35.
If you are driving brand awareness and engagement offline, you will also be driving conversations on Twitter, and the stories that are emerging and growing on Twitter won’t necessarily stay there.
It also has a flourishing ecosystem of applications on both desktop and mobile platforms, making it easier for users to manage their Twitter accounts, and its “bite-sized” nature is helping to nurture a growing mobile audience, visiting the site an average of 17.1 times from a mobile phone in Q1 2009.
If people are talking about your brand, then it’s likely that if it doesn’t already have a presence in conversations on Twitter then it will in the future. So next, we will look at ways you can monitor and manage that presence
twIttER AuDIENCE’S uSE OF OtHER MEDIA wEBSItES
2,000
.
BBC The Sun
1,500
Active internet users Twitter audience
Telegraph Media Group
1,000
MailOnline
Facebook audience (2006/2007) Twitter audience (2008/2009)
500
Guardian Media Group ITV Network Centre
Mar 09 (Twitter) / Mar 07 (Facebook)
Feb 09 (Twitter) / Feb 07 (Facebook)
Jan 09 (Twitter) / Jan 07 (Facebook)
Dec 08 (Twitter) / Dec 06 (Facebook)
0 Nov 08 (Twitter) / Nov 06 (Facebook)
Nielsen Online.)
RELAtIvE GROwtH RAtES OF FACEBOOK AND twIttER
Oct 08 (Twitter) / Oct 06 (Facebook)
Twitter’s users also appear to be becoming more engaged with the service, with the average user now spending over four times as long on the site as they did in December. (Source:
2,500
Users (000)
Comparing its growth to that of Facebook in 2006/2007 when its audience was a similar size simply highlights the speed at which Twitter is growing (see chart.)
If you are interested in finding the “key influencers”; those who are most likely to be sharing their views on Facebook or writing and commenting on blogs, then there is a good chance that you can find them using Twitter. (Many use it as a channel to drive traffic to their blogs.) This means that if you are working to generate positive publicity for your brand, a strategy for using social platforms is essential for maximising your positive PR.
They also appear to be heavy media consumers, as they are considerably more likely to be visiting traditional media websites. But they are also more engaged internet users; more likely to shop online (through visits to sites like Amazon or eBay) and much more likely than average to use other blogging and social networking sites such as Facebook, Wordpress or Blogger (see chart.)
Channel 4 YouTube WordPress.com Blogger Facebook eBay Amazon 0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
% Reach
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70%
80%
90%
100%
wHAt SHOuLD YOuR BRAND BE DOING?
Establish Guidelines
There are a number of different ways a brand can use Twitter, depending on what you want to achieve and the resources that are available to achieve it, ranging from tracking conversations, identifying key influencers, distributing information or engaging in a direct dialogue with customers.
Listen! You can use services like Twitter’s own search function (http://search.twitter.com) to see if your brand is being mentioned or discussed, who by, and in what context. There are a number of free tools available that can help analyse conversations in Social Media spaces- but these are often limited, as they require time-consuming analysis to make sense of the data they produce. They will have either limited or no understanding of positive and negative sentiment or sarcasm, and limited ability to identify the influence of commenters or significance of particular comments. There are other tools and services which can help you to more effectively track and analyse the conversations that are happening around your brands- not just on Twitter, but across other Social Media spaces such as blogs and social networking websites. SMV Group have several partners who can help your brand in this space.
Twitter is built around a much more open framework than a Social Network like Facebook. While Facebook has several tools or settings to give users a degree of privacy, it is much easier to see what someone is saying on Twitter, and this can have an impact- both positive and negative- on the way an associated brand is perceived. A customer who posts openly on Twitter about poor service from a particular company might receive a direct response from an employee who gives them useful information and support. But this could prompt a very different impression of the brand depending on whether they “look” official- what could be seen as a helpful response from a helpful company might also be perceived as a helpful employee of an unhelpful company. If your staff have a presence on Social Media websites, and are passionate about their work and proud of the brand that they represent, then they will want to share this- and this should be encouraged! But brand guidelines are important for any media space, and for Social Media like Twitter where messages are in the open and can spread incredibly quickly, their importance is magnified.
Set a strategy Your Twitter strategy should depend on what you want to achieve, and the resources that are available. There isn’t currently a way to buy advertising space on Twitter- the presence that brands have are purely within, rather than around the service, so it is space that must be earnt rather than bought. If it’s relevant or appropriate, you might want to create a direct channel for communications between your brand and consumers- this could be thanking users for saying positive things, or using it as a CRM mechanism to address unsatisfied consumers. Alternatively, it could be used to build your brand as an expert source of industry information, providing exclusive insights and updates.
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FIND YOuR BRAND vOICE
Option 2: Be a spokesperson for your brand
If there is a need for a brand presence, then you will need to consider your brand’s voice. Firstly, there is the question of whether to take a “broadcast” approach (that is, purely to send out messages to everyone), or an “engaging” approach (to go into a public dialogues with anyone who engages with your brand.)
A brand voice should fit with the brand’s personality, and it might be that your brand personality simply isn’t best illustrated by a logo and company name, but a face and a human name.
A “broadcast” approach could take the form of an automated service- for example, posting updates from an existing company blog or website. While this may be more suitable for a direct marketing exercise (such as posting short-term special offers), it lacks some of the brand-building opportunities that a more engaging approach could offer. On the other hand, while an “engaging” approach may offer more opportunities, it also demands more resources. Will messages you receive from consumers get a prompt response, or is there a risk that they might they go unanswered? Will your profile be maintained by the CEO, or can it be handled by an administrative assistant? A strategy will also need to be scalable- while you might be able to manage 50 connections, it will be a different proposition to manage 1,000.
But transparency is essential- companies like Sony, Wal-Mart and Land Rover have discovered the hard way that using Social Media by pretending to be a brand evangelist doesn’t work, and can backfire. (In addition, laws passed in the UK last year forbid businesses and their employees or agencies from posting on blogs and forums without disclosing any affiliation or financial connections with the companies they talk about.) Remember that a “personal brand” is still a brand, and the traditional brand guidelines should apply- so don’t be a motoring expert one day, a music fan the next and a joke factory the week after. Examples: Scott Monty (Ford), Alicia (Honda), Frank Eliason (ComCast)
Option 3: Mix & Match
Option 1: Be your brand The best way to make a clearly “official” brand presence: Use your brand name as your user name, and your brand logo as your avatar. Examples: Google, BBC, T-Mobile, Cheapflights.co.uk But be proactive- make sure that your brand name isn’t being used by someone else. Brands such as South West Trains and Ryanair have seen their brand names and imagery hijacked and used to post sarcastic “updates” to consumers.
These two approaches aren’t mutually exclusive, nor are they exhaustive. There’s no reason that your brand can’t have more than one presence- for example, Dell and Ford both have a number of Twitter accounts, each specialising in information about different areas of their business. The important point is the tone of voice- a surprising amount can be said in only 140 characters at a time! Obviously, your voice should match your brand identity, so if your brand is young and friendly, then your voice should be young and friendly to match- whether it’s represented by a spokesperson or the brand itself.
Similarly, an account set up by a user (“twitter.com/CNNbrk”) to send breaking news from the CNN website to his own mobile phone was discovered by CNN. However, rather than ordering the 24 year old who set the account up to shut it down, instead they employed him and acquired the account- which recently became the second Twitter account to achieve over 1 million followers.
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IN SuMMARY…
FuRtHER INFORMAtION
Monitor your brand Although a simple search for mentions of your brand can be done quickly and for free, there are a range of more sophisticated tools and services that specialize in analysing the Twitter conversations, along with discussions about your brand on other websites.
Starcom Mediavest Group have recently completed a project looking into Word of Mouth- what drives word of mouth across different categories, who the people who talk most about brands are, and how to understand and drive brand-related conversations. For more information about these projects, as well as the applications that can analyse conversations on Twitter and other websites, please speak to your Business Director, Account Director or contact Starcom MediaVest Research; smgresearch@smvgroup.co.uk
Establish guidelines and set a strategy Even if your brand doesn’t have an “official” presence or spokesperson, guidelines should be established for anyone using Twitter who might be associated with your brand, such as staff, partners or affiliates. If you are going to have an active presence on Twitter, then set out what you want to achieve. Do you want to listen, to broadcast, or engage with a Twittering audience? Do you want to drive sales, or drive a conversation? Once these goals have been identified, establish how to measure your progress towards them.
Be proactive While you might decide that you don’t want or need a presence straight away, it’s worth taking steps to protect your brand. If your brand name has already been taken (find out by visiting http://twitter.com/[your brand]) then contact Twitter about the steps that need to be taken to reclaim it.
Listen Above all else, listen. Twitter offers an opportunity to hear what people are saying about your brand. Whether or not you choose to have a presence on Twitter and join in the conversation, simply being aware of your “brand health” and what people are saying about your brand, products or organization puts you in a position where you can make an informed choice about how to communicate with your consumers.
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