18 responses so far ↓

• 1 gmarkham // Jul 15, 2009 at 5:19 am

  It’s too early right now. People said the same about google when it got started.

• 2 maggiep // Jul 15, 2009 at 10:08 am

  Google was different, it didn’t rely on users to give it the content. It gave an immediate benefit to the user.

  In this instance the “content” is made by the network and if “only twits tweet” then the network won’t explode.

  If you can’t make it pay then how will it survive?

• 3 hglewis1 // Jul 16, 2009 at 1:32 pm

  Much as I’d rather not agree with Rupert Murdoch, I do agree with his Twitter opinion.

  A marketer should maintain control over the organization’s messages. Twitter shifts control to any individual who may or may not decide to attack. Evidence of this negative factor already exists.

  Some peripheral operators already are soliciting direct marketers, offering to mount a campaign in which “independent” individuals will boost whatever those marketers are selling, through Tweets. Eventual result: even less credibility.

• 4 jelliott // Jul 16, 2009 at 1:38 pm

  How do you add value from advertising? By becoming targeted and personalised. It’s a well publicised fact that social media networks are collecting a mass of data on each of their members. Successful monetisation will only occur when twitter and the like figure out a way to use that data effectively, so that marketers can personalise their offering on a 1:1 basis, and thus remove any intrusion.

• 5 jelliott // Jul 16, 2009 at 2:01 pm

  Surely voicing an opinion about a brand - whether good or bad - is better than apathy? (look at Marmite). At least by opening a clear and easy channel for communication, it allows for feedback (whether good or bad) and presents a confident image of a company that has nothing to hide.

• 6 dsacks // Jul 16, 2009 at 2:06 pm

  Ian. Stop chasing teenagers! It’s illegal in most States anyway. Trying to tap into the latest ephemeral trend whether it’s Twitter or one of a dozen others is not productive. They have disposable income but they piddle most of it away on concerts, movies, fast food, cosmetics and clothing off the sales racks. Go after the older folks. They are easier to target, are stable, have more money and they’re of legal age.

• 7 ztaylor // Jul 16, 2009 at 2:14 pm

  A question many B2B marketers have been exploring is ‘Is Social Media a genuine business communications tool for B2B?’ I think it is. However, there are rules as in any marketing strategy that should be adhered to.

  Social Media is most effective as part of an integrated approach to marketing. As the wise Matthew said consumers are ‘resenting intrusive advertising’, so it is important to put the power back in the hands of the individuals.

  We recently held a seminar on the implications of Social Media in B2B marketing and speaker Neville Hobson commented that by using social media ‘public relations becomes personal relationships’. It is not about marketing to the mass anymore but reaching out to small groups who you know are interested in the content/product/service you provide.

  It’s not about what and who you know; rather it’s about who and what they know.

  Personally, the advantages far outweigh the effort it takes to participate and monitor the effectiveness of using social media (although help is at hand with an increasing swarm of web-based tools to help you achieve this).

  You can find out what people are saying about you and quickly and openly respond to any negativity. You can become a credible voice for your organization. Create brand advocates, take advantage of free advertising, help your SEO; promote events to niche groups, interact and share information, create polls and surveys that will quickly help you gather vital customer intelligence. These are but a few valuable incentives for using Social Media in B2B.

  LinkedIn alone currently has over 36 million members, 18 million of which are business decision makers. Can you afford not to join in the revolution, even if it is a passing phase?

  If you are still unsure, you need look no further than Obama’s presidential election campaign to witness the power behind Social Media.

• 8 merrylaw // Jul 16, 2009 at 4:09 pm

  Twitter is very different from LinkedIn and those differences need to be considered.

  All the social media may be more about public relations and lead generation than monetization. These social media appear to be replacing the now-old-fashioned list serves and chat rooms, which were never effectively monetized as far as I know but were powerful sources of contacts, marketing leads, information, and rumors.

  Grassroots organizing for politics and social causes is very different from marketing, particularly B2B, but those negative comments or rumors can kill a product or a business. We must watch that someone who is not satisfied, even if it becomes a cost does not trash our reputations.

• 9 thomhansen // Jul 16, 2009 at 7:29 pm

  Twitter may be a useful tool for branding and recognition rather than successful customer acqusition (monetization as someone else stated).

  However, Twitter may also be the fore-runner of possible marketing tools for the future. We need to look forward at the generation who is using Twitter and similar Social Networks NOW. They may not be end-users or B2B business contacts today - but in 10-20 years they will be who we are tryign to reach. AND They will be familiar and comfortabl;e with Twitter and its next-generation. So looking ahead - we should live and learn and perhaps, adapt.

• 10 ianchughes // Jul 19, 2009 at 9:01 am

  Thanks for the input folks.

  This month in the Physical version of DMI i wrote about Metcalfe’s law, the value of a network being equal to the square of the number of participants. Meaning it gets exponentially more valuable as it grows.

  For me Linked-In is a different value proposition to twitter, and I can see how that gets monetized. If i can connect with people in business around the world and take advantage of their “6 degrees of separation” facility, i can see the value to me. A value worth paying for. As long as i can edit the people trying to connect with me.

  Facebook i get, because it is a social version of linked-in. Again, i might be prepared to make an appropriate trade -off with facebook and i am mature enough to know it isn’t free. But check out http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8155367.stm

  But Twitter. Twitter is mindless noise. A recent blogger on another site I write for said i wasn’t working hard enough on Twitter, i wasn’t referencing enough etc. But I don’t want to be a free readers digest for those who can be bothered to read my unfolding life story.

• 11 jackiefast // Jul 21, 2009 at 12:31 pm

  I think that is where the confusion lies. Ian you are right, no one wants to hear that you bought mandarins on sale at the local M&S; however, if you recently saw an article or product that you thought was amazing and I value your opinion (which is assumed if I am following you on Twitter) that is where the value lies. Twitter is creating an extremely targeted and engaged audience who want to hear from you. As a B2B tool, Twitter may not bring you new clients, but it has the ability to make your current clients advocates. There is money to be made there.

  Twitter and other social media is a start to a new way of marketing. It allows the individual to have their say and become engaged. It is true that at the moment social media is not well monetised, but that is because it is new - to the market, to marketers, to even the developers. It is illogical to assume that the same ROI principles would then apply and derive its value based on that.

  I am sure many of your clients are probably not in the ‘Twitter’ space yet and potentially don’t want to be marketed to in this way. However, that isn’t to say they won’t be.

  With targeted marketing as one of the key elements to successful marketing campaigns, I think it is mad to not at least test it to see how it could add value to your business.

• 12 ianchughes // Jul 22, 2009 at 4:59 am

  Hi Jackie,

  Part of the problem here has to be that I need to want to keep it updated. For me to want to do that i need to either be an extrovert (who really doesn’t care whether someone reads it or not, as long as the mike button is pressed) or I have to see a value to me from making my updates.

  And I don’t.

  I hear the “show people how smart i am” point, and that is interesting. But i am only smart once in a blue moon, maybe once or twice a month. this requires me to be smart almost every 10 minutes?

  Ian

• 13 richardstonejunctionpr // Jul 22, 2009 at 9:33 am

  KFC has recently demonstrated the power of Twitter for consumer brands - or has it? Oprah talked about the launch of the company’s new offering on her show, siting a voucher that could be downloaded from the KFC Web site. The voucher then hit Twitter and the result was a huge upturn in sales and so many Web hits that the KFC site crashed.

  Hurrah! Marketing has a new Mecca! The recession is over! All we need is a 140 character tweet!

  Well, kind off. KFC’s story is a great example of the newest marketing technique being credited for 100% of a success, despite ‘old’ marketing techniques being a crucial element of the project. The voucher might have been posted on Twitter but the story had already been on The Oprah Winfrey show. That’s the highest rated talk show in American television history! The longest running daytime talk show in American history! One of Time Magazine’s top fifty most influential TV shows ever! Could it be that appearing on Oprah made a difference as well?

  The moral is that Twitter is a useful marketing tactic but it isn’t the be all and end all of modern marketing. In this example, the PR people played their part by generating the plug on Oprah. I have no doubt the direct marketing, advertising, SEO, e-mail marketing and point of sale people could present their involvement as well. In my B2B niche of industrial and engineering PR, Twitter isn’t yet the most effective thing a marketeer could be doing today. Maybe it will be tomorrow.

• 14 lmarlow // Jul 28, 2009 at 9:02 am

  As a B2B marketer, I recognise it is really difficult to know where social media is going and how best to make use of it.
  As a key supplier to both B2B and B2C marketers, I believe the industry needs to assume that it is another viable channel and rather than worry about whether we use it or not, consider who you are using it for and when. The best results come from sending the right message, at the right time, through the right channel - why should adding another channel make it any different? Many companies already build into their customer data the channel preference – the options are merely increasing.

• 15 markroy // Jul 31, 2009 at 11:20 am

  Discovering that Twitter – Britain’s favourite digital channel du jour – has a retention rate of only 40 per cent really doesn’t come as much surprise. Maybe I’m getting a little old in the tooth, but Nielsen Online’s confirmation that even the short term appeal of reading such scintillating Tweets as ‘back from gym, swore at cat, now making cuppa’ points to the limited appeal of 140-character messaging. Even for ADD types.

  The marketing moral of this story? As Mr Murdoch’s and most teens’ scepticism attests, gathering more and more followers on Twitter is one thing, but keeping them engaged and interested is a very different (and difficult) kettle of Tweets for brand managers. My company’s on Twitter and I’ve recently set up my own account as the new Chair of the DMA’s Data Council, so I’m not just barking from the sidelines here. You can be sure I’m giving my ‘sticky content’ fingers a very thorough licking. (Sorry – didn’t mean to gross you out.)

  In this post-content age, do the Twitter stats point to the medium no longer being the message, perhaps? Sure, Twitter’s now adding applications like Tweetdeck and TwitterGadget in a bid, I assume, to enhance the service’s retention rates. But at the risk of sounding like a cyber-canary tweeting in the digital coal mine, maybe we’d all do well to heed this warning: Social media’s no ‘magic bullet’ for recession-bred client communication strategies.

  Mark Roy
  CEO
  The REaD Group plc

• 16 richardgibson // Aug 4, 2009 at 8:17 am

  I’m not sure I have too much to add to Ian’s original question but some thoughts from the comments, my tuppence (two cents) worth. I’ve been using it, for a number of months now and found it quite useful.

  Some other observations:
  - I find out quite a bit of information via it, albeit there is a lot of duplicated content (lot’s of RT’ing), you could say a lot of noise but that’s the same when you read a newspaper or a magazine. However I’ve been focused on relevant areas to my job role, industry and people I know and trust and find myself skimming to filter out the nuggets.

  - I’ve used it to share content, news articles, event details. Previously I may have emailed this to a small group. Some of this ‘content’ is available on other social networks, for example LinkedIn (events) and there is an element of duplication. I also have used Twitter to save links where previously I used social bookmarking sites, for example delicious. I still use this site, only less so as I feel I am connected so some of my network via Twitter. A good example of this is the UK DMA’s Email marketing council where many members have accounts and been using it.

  - On the ROI ‘debate’ – I’ve heard some figures quoted about how Brand X or Y made significant sales or sales uplift via Twitter. I’m intrigued by this and am at least initially sceptical and wonder if research has been done in terms of new sales, or how some users have moved from responding via one channel to another or in this case from one website to another. Agree with Mark, it is not a ‘magic bullet’.

  - Agree with Zoe’s comments. Specifically I’ve seen customers; rather prospective customers ask questions about our products and services. In these cases we as a company have had several people respond to their questions.

  - I think as email (direct) marketers we need to investigate, embrace and be aware of these kinds of emerging trends/sites and be aware of how consumers are using these emerging channels alongside email.

  Good to see a good debate here, no doubt a testament to Matt and Sally’s network.

• 17 sburrell // Aug 5, 2009 at 11:56 am

  It may well be that teenagers are not as enthusiastic about Twitter as we are led to believe, but not all of us are wanting or needing to target this particular audience. There are however as we know, plenty of other people using this social media and whilst it is there and for all intense and purposes is free to use, let’s make the most of it!

  Newsweek has over half a million followers due to the ability to drive “followers” to the latest articles. I would say that is a very useful marketing tool.

  Will Twitter start generating revenue and still be around in 5 years time, who knows, but for now it is reaching millions of people and I for one am happy to make use of it.

  One final point, the great thing about Twitter is that you can control who you send information to and who you receive information from. Not many media allow you to that.

• 18 Direct Marketing International Online DMIonline.net — DMI columnist nominated for entrepreneur award // Aug 24, 2009 at 1:25 pm

  [...] Vote for Hughes here: http://o2-business.com/Business/Vote.aspx  Meanwhile, you can ‘Talk Back’ to him in his DMI Master Debater role. Join his latest rant here: http://dmionline.net/blog/2009/07/14/talk-back/ [...]

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