Twitter for Marketers

By now, you may have heard about the new service called Twitter, since it’s been getting an increasing amount of buzz lately. The service is basically “speed blogging”, where people answer the question “what are you doing now?” in 140 characters or less.

My SEM colleagues and I here at NLC spent about an hour or so recently sitting around a computer saying “it’s fun, but what do you do with it?

“What is Twitter For?” is the multi-million-dollar question that many people seem to be having trouble answering.

Recently, I was explaining to a few people what you can do with Twitter, and how it could be monetized. The guy that I was speaking with asked me if I could please go and explain this to Twitter, as they were having some trouble explaining how to monetize their own service to his VC-type friends.

Most people haven’t used Twitter yet and may not understand how it works. Basically, after signing up for the service, you have 140 characters to answer the question “what are you doing right now?”. If you choose to allow “anyone” to view your updates, then each update may be shown briefly on the “public timeline”. Updates from friends that you add, or people that you “follow” are shown on your home page. Other people who choose to “follow” you can see when you add an update.

Several Internet news services are already using Twitter to broadcast current news stories. Sites such as Techmeme, Search Engine Land, and Mashable are adding news stories, as they happen, to Twitter in order to capture more audience and increase their visibility as up-to-the-minute news services. The fast, brief updates that is the heart of Twitter allows an audience to quickly scan headlines and follow the stories that seem important.

But what is Twitter, really? At it’s heart, it’s a one-to-many text messaging & IM system. One message comes in, many go out. As such, it’s true value lies in being a social broadcasting platform. It can be used for friends to keep in touch, especially busy, hyper-connected tweens. It can be used by news hounds to find new stories and see what is generating buzz right now. It can be used in the same spirit as reality TV, by those who are interested in the lives of others.

From a marketing point of view, Twitter is best used as part of a wider strategy. While theoretically Twitter could be used to increase awareness of a product or service in a new audience, it’s real value could be in sustaining an existing relationship. There are already services out that allow you to add Twitter to your blog or website. Twitter can be a great way to remind people that you are there, with very little effort.

For those of you who are still unsure of why Twitter exists, think of it this way: It has taken me about an hour to research, write and post this blog entry about Twitter. It will take me about 10 seconds to add a note and a link to this post in Twitter. My Twitter entry could appear instantly (though briefly) to thousands of people with a fraction of the effort. That’s why Twitter has potential.