Why You Should Use Twitter and Become a “ChirpMarketer”
a form of marketing that is used to convey short messages that are highly centralized, can create impact and grab target market’s attention without them having to spend substantial amount of time looking at the marketing message.
ChirpMarketer
any person or business who uses Twitter or other similar services to create brand awareness with short, enticing messages that call for action
Marketing on Twitter therefore is ChirpMarketing and anyone using Twitter to market are ChirpMarketers.
Twitter as you all know is one of the best online communication tools out there. It helps you connect with other users and share your views and ideas. The key to any marketing strategy is to communicate, which can be through content, images, video or any other forms of marketing. Marketing thrives on communication and communication online thrives on Twitter to say the least. Twitter has emerged as one of the most influential marketing platform and this is the reason why we are seeing more and more companies diving into it.
The growth of Twitter has been nothing short of a miracle. Although the service itself has yet to see any form of revenue, more and more businesses are implementing Twitter into their marketing strategy. If you are a business and you don’t exist on twitter yet, you are losing a good share of your target market. Movies, retail products, services you name it and you will find businesses related to these on Twitter. There is a reason these businesses have taken the leap and embraced “chirpmarketing.” Communication is the key to building a presence and an influential presence can do good to your business in many ways.
Lets quick take a look at why your business should exist on twitter,
- Communication - Marketing thrives on communication. Twitter gives you a platform to send messages that are short yet effective. The 140 character limitation to some might be a pain but to effective marketers this is a blessing. If you can convey your message within 140 characters your consumers are most likely to pay attention to you rather than a sales copy that takes almost 30 minutes to read.
- Branding - If you exist on Twitter, you exist on the web. Period. Twitter can tremendously help in creating brand through community participation.
- Humanization - Twitter gives you a platform which helps you participate actively as an individual community member rather than a business as a whole. Think about it, how many businesses actually can and do share “what they are doing?” not very many. Twitter’s foundation is based on that very question that allows you to participate without being tied to marketing itself.
- Customer Service – Lately I have been more inclined to use twitter search rather than google when I am looking for customer service for a particular business. Whether it is an airline ticket that I bought or problem with my hosting service, I am tempted to “@” them on twitter rather than call and wait for hours.
- Trust - Social Media presence is built on “trust factor” and the same rule applies on twitter as well. Twitter gives you a platform that hosts millions of active users where you can gain presence within a short amount of time and build the trust factor. By the way, I recently bought a DELL computer although I am more inclined towards HP simply by seeing DELL’s active participation on Twitter, and of course recommendation from other Twitter users. Marketing isn’t simply about selling products, it is about influencing and Twitter helps you influence the market not through your business profile alone but through the community itself.
Let us quick take a look at a graph that shows the growth of Twitter since its launch in 2006,
You can clearly see from the image above that twitter has enjoyed a steady growth. I can almost guarantee that by the end of 2009 we will be seeing more and more businesses dropping off of Facebook and using twitter more aggressively as a marketing tool.
Are you chirping yet? 
Another important thing to remember when marketing your brand on twitter…is to engage the audience back, show personality, and remove that separation of company to client. Everyone is a person on twitter…and no one likes a person who just drones on about themselves…and doesn’t share the love.
Stuart Fosters last blog post..Interactive Social Media
@Stuart : Thank you for your comment. I thought the point no.3 “Humanization” would cover that but I should have talked a little more about it. Thanks again
John Chow http://johnchow.com just sent out a tweet asking “What Would Make You Unfollow Someone On Twitter?”
Aside from useless messages, one common thing was people advertising their new blog post, or new product, asking to be Dugg,and spammy tweets.
I unfollowed someone lately as they were asking the readership on their blog if they should sell a new video product or not. Many readers responded, and the blog owner replied by ranting about the people that felt it should be given for free.
In subsequent days he whined about his opinion that readers did not understand his question, and he sounded quite angry.
AFter suffering through way to many tweets on that subject I stopped following his tweet and his blog.
I would like to hear some feedback on the promoting your own blog issue. Is that considered spam?
Terry Krysaks last blog post..Portrait Of Allan Nott-Original Drawing Artwork
@Terry : I wouldn’t say promoting your blog or links on Twitter is spamming if you are doing it in moderation. We need to realize that social platforms are out there for us to become social. If we don’t participate or engage in conversation on twitter and only tweet links then I would say that is spamming. It all depends how you use it. For example some people tweet links throughout the day but they aren’t exactly from their blogs. They share what they find interesting with their followers and friends and once in a while throw links from their blogs as well.
I think the key here is to participate and be a part of the community first. You need to engage and become an active participant. The central idea of any social media platform is to give to the community first and not ask. I hope that answers your question
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I love the way Twitter has created its our sub-language, and as a Chirp [self] Marketer I think this post is spot on.
I forsee a problem with Customer Service though. Twitter works for small companies with a small amount of followers, but how would a large company like General Motors keep track, let alone respond to, @tweets about the gear box on it’s latest model. It’s akin to email, in theory making it easiers for company/customer to interact. But actually it makes it so easy for the customer to interact that the company can’t keep up. Whilst a mountain of @tweets build and are left unresponded – with the added embarassment of it all being public.
Regardless I agree, companies should have a presence on Twitter, they just need to manage Tweetsumer expectations.
I agree with the risk of opening the floodgates as described in the General Motors example by RichSpalding, but I do think that Twitter provides an opportunity to intercept and resolve gripes about a genuine service issue.
Places like Twitter is where a lot of harm can be done to a company’s reputation by people who complain about something when they’re frustrated. This leads to everyone jumping in and adding their own horror story and they wind each other up.
If General Motors had a small team monitoring Twitter for complaints about GM products, and they were able to jump in and address them before they got out of hand, they’d get the benefit of turning potentially negative publicity into positive publicity. They’d also be able to pre-empt escalating customer complaint cases and all the cost that goes with them.
Martin.
raymond.cc
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