25,000 Reasons Why Your Brand Should Twitter

    Zehnder Communications finished a survey this week that found 37% of people on Twitter and Facebook do NOT follow a brand. Further, of those that do, only 42% had ever conversed with a brand they follow.
   A quick shout out to Tom Martin, social media guy and president of Zehnder Communications, who was kind enough to share his results with me. You can learn more about what Tom learned from his survey by checking his blog early next week.

   Brands considering assimilation into the social media collective might find it discouraging that fewer than half of their followers would bother to interact.
   But consider this: eMarketer estimated last month that Twitter has 6 million users. The same month, Facebook reported it had crossed the 200 million user line. Both reports said each site continues to exhibit exponential growth rates.
   So, let’s crunch Zehnder’s numbers further.
   If only .01% of Twitter’s population followed your brand today, that would represent 60,000 people – over 25,000 of which might actively converse with you. Facebook, would yield you a cool 840,000 people who are familiar with your brand, and ready and willing to engage you in conversation.
   So, the question isn’t whether or not your brand should be on Twitter or Facebook. It’s how to drive value from these sites.
   Three thoughts to get you started: connection, context and immediacy.

Building connections
   Connecting with your customers is the easy part. Twitter and Facebook are both free, and a strong brand can expect to quickly attract a core audience to the table.

Building context
   To the uninitiated, Twitter especially can seem like“a way for the narcissistic to keep in touch with the feckless.”
   I admit there are a select few individuals whom I follow on Twitter (props to @badbanana) that raise the stand-alone non-sequiter to an art form. Generally, however, I skim past about 90% of what fills my TweetDeck.
   Context arises from the interplay of replies and re-Tweets. It’s just another word for conversation.
   What makes Facebook and Twitter such sustainable and relevant marketing tools is their potential to spark and propagate conversations with customers. The right way to do this is to assign someone to actually listen and interact with customers to generate buzz and optimize customer service.
   If conversing feels like you’re giving up some control over how to present your brand, that’s because you are. Yes, there are risks that people will use social media sites to complain about you. The point is, they’d be complaining anyway. Joining the conversation gives you a voice.
   What you don’t want to do is simply slap a Twitter widget on your brand’s webpage (I’m looking at you Mars Inc.), and let the kids run the candy store…

   Social media doesn’t just shorten the distances between brands and their customers, it can accelerates the pace of both business and customer service. Twitter is, again, the star here.
   Companies like FYE, via @fyeguy, use Twitter to promote almost daily giveaways and discounts on select merchandise. Other brands have learned to actively monitor the Twitterverse for potential customers inquiring about their products – or their competitor’s products. A near real-time response can often turn that impulsive inquiry into a sale. Zicam Cold Remedy, via @ZiCam, for example, searches for people tweeting about an oncoming cold, and then sends them a coupon.
   This may all represent just the tip of the iceberg. The Holy Grail is to launch a low-cost social marketing campaign, and watch it go viral across let the mediacosm. The challenge is learning how to plan and control the message once it’s taken on a life of its own.
   That’ll be a topic for another post.

Comments

[tom martin]

Thanks for the shout out to Zehnder.. I'm a bit behind on the blogging this week but promise that the full results will be posted at www.tommartin.typepad.com next week!

@TomMartin

[Chuck Hardin]

Reaching 25,000 customers sounds like an awfully good deal to me. Of course, my business explicitly does not involve extensive amounts of message control with my customers, so for me most of the potential problems with a Twitter presence are obviated.

Good article; I'm convinced. Awaiting the next post.