By Reid Greenberg

Who out there is Twittering? Of those who are Twittering, who truly knows the reasons why you are doing so? If you attended the session about online marketing at last week’s TFBC conference held in Greenville, SC, you’ll recall that we inadvertently spent a lot of time discussing Twitter; especially once we launched the Tweet Deck API.

No doubt about it; Twitter is now mainstream and a powerful social informational and communication medium. With the recent press Twitter has received, the buzz is out and brands from all over the globe are diving in to establish their little square on the beach. No longer is Twitter a peripheral fantasy in which to dabble.

The question we must ask is how does a brand leverage Twitter and does your business need to be there?

Delivering the Brand
Name your passion and your favorite company probably already has a presence on Twitter. Companies ranging from Dell, Green Mountain Coffee, Ibex Outdoor Clothing, Google, Patagonia and more tweet on a seemingly hourly basis. In fact, Whole Foods has over 300,000 followers which provides them with the medium to communicate at an instants notice to alert followers about cooking tips, sale items, recipes, and social responsibility endeavors. Ibex Outdoor Clothing relies on Twitter to announce new items on their site, distribute special “Twitter-only” promotions, provide updates as to what events they’ll be attending, and engage their followers by building long-lasting relationships. Even the NFL draft tweeted their picks before notifying other media outlets. Micoblogging meets armchair athletes.

Individuals no longer have to see corporate brands as faceless organizations with in-your-face push marketing. With social media, especially Twitter, almost anyone can interact with the brand of their choice on their terms and their time and pull the desired conversations inward. Interruption marketing is an aging derelict that will no longer sail and good marketers understand this.

The Stats
Do you believe your brand reaches out to an older demographic that probably does not use social media? Think again. In early April, comScore released some interesting statistics about Twitter. Without a doubt, Twitter traffic is on the rise. What is surprising is who’s driving the traffic. 45-54 year olds are the top demographic with the expected group of 25-34 year olds following closely behind at second. In fact, maybe Twitter is no longer “cool” when viewed through the eyes of 20-somethings and they are off to the next big thing.

In Summary
If your brand’s marketing plan does not include Twitter as a bulleted item, you should seriously consider it as part of your mix. Even if you are unsure how best to execute your Twitter ideas, at the very least you need to be on the medium monitoring the chatter. Without a doubt, someone out there is tweeting either about your company or in the or your industry. Learn, observe, and then engage when you are ready.

One word of caution, however; before you simply register and start tweeting, make certain that you have a good list of company guidelines and a plan in place. Will Twitter be governed by an oversight committee with a corporate objective in mind or will it be handed off to a brand ambassador or social responsibility outreach team with relatively free reign? Will it be the responsibility of the CEO (or TweeEO)? There are pros and cons to both approaches and some things to consider are:

1. How will you engage your audience?
2. What is your “personality” on Twitter?
3. Is your goal to market, explain, engage, or just start conversations?
4. Be sure to maintain your brand uniqueness and its identity.
5. Be open, honest and as transparent as possible. Social media will ferret out any inconsistencies and untruths and your brand will be forever tarnished.

Remember; in this time of social media don’t use the new medium to market the old way. Pull people in rather than over market your brand. And lastly, maintain your brand, identity. This is especially true with any social media marketing engagement including Twitter.

Reid Greenberg is the B2B Ecommerce Marketing Manager for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and a partner in Trillium Digital Marketing, an Internet design, strategy and marketing consulting company. He can be reached via Twitter: @reid_greenberg

Tags: internet marketing, social media marketing, Twitter

This entry was posted by pam on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 5:35 pm and is filed under Online Marketing, Timber Frame Business Council. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.